Cullen's Roadhouse
by TGBMcCray
Summary: Bella Swan is adrift. She's got a worthless college degree, bills, two friends, a shitty apartment, and too many ex-boyfriends. Swearing off men seems like a good idea, at least until she can figure out how to pour a proper beer and make some cash at Cullen's Roadhouse. It's an apron that sets her off – an apron, some Levi's, and a tall glass of Diet Coke.
1. Diet Coke and Ice

Keeping up with this woman makes me feel like a massive joke. She's got ten years and sixty pounds on me, but I am drenched in sweat as we move behind the bar, grabbing tickets and filling frosty glasses, and how the fuck does she make pouring just the right amount of head on these beers look so effortless? She's not even sweating. I'd hate her, but I am taking her job, and she's off to have a real life as a bank teller and be home when her kids are off the bus or some shit. Plus, she's trying really hard to be patient with me. I can see it clearly because I am five inches taller than her, and all day, all damned day, she has been looking up at me like I am a sad little thing to be pitied but so far she hasn't given up.

"Hey, Lauren!" Jesus. That construction worker with the crew cut, what's his name? Taylor? Tyson? Tyler? He's yelling at her but I'm supposed to be covering him, and I bet I've fucked something up again. My hands are freezing, and they are the only part of me that is, as I stick my hands back into the coolers again and come out with the wrong fucking bottle of beer. No, no, no. Bandana Guy drinks Coors Light. And this is? What the fuck is this? Rolling Rock? No. I take two big steps, and yank open another section of the cooler, managing to break my nail on the aluminum sliding top, but I catch myself before I curse out loud because there's an old guy with a shot of Wild Turkey in front of me, and he is already looking way too fucking amused with me.

"Lauren!" I watch her shift over to him as she fills another giant pitcher with beer from the taps behind us, but she makes him wait till she's handed it off to a server and stabbed another white ticket from that never ending ticker tape of orders that keep generating at the end of the bar. "Pour me a beer," Tyler says, real loud, so that everybody sitting along the glossy black bar and all up section B 1-13 looks up. "New Girl doesn't know shit about head. Look at all this foam. What's she trying to do? Choke me?"

My cheeks are burning as the entire section, which is mostly filled with construction workers on lunch break and annoying students, bursts into good-natured guffaws. Squeezing my eyes shut, I stick my head nearly inside the horizontal cooler, pretending to be searching for just the right long neck of Coors Light from the rows of shiny silver tops winking at me. Breathe. Oh, you fucker. I wish you would choke on the foam. I hate this. I want to do a good job, and I don't want Lauren to tell the Cullens I can't cut it here. I need this job. Four fucking years of college, and I've got bills to pay, and I don't know anybody here, and I need this job, I do. I just need some time, damn it. I've never done this before. Waited tables or served people, or got my tennis shoes all black on holey rubber walking mats. Lauren keeps telling me I'll be glad these things are here by the end of my shift, but I don't believe her. I feel like a gladiator, trying to stay on top that stupid rubber pedestal.

When I come up for air, Wild Turkey smiles at me. "Can I get another?" he says, quiet, from behind big, dark sunglasses and a shaggy dog beard.

"Oh! Yeah, okay. Sure."

I ring it up, and actually manage to find the right buttons on this register, but when I turn to the daunting array of plugged liquor bottles behind me, I'm lost.

"Third one from the left, about middle ways up the back," he says, and oh, relief. I like this guy. I pour it without managing to spill, and he swallows it in one gulp without looking like a greedy, creepy old bastard somehow. He slaps a five on the bar, smiles at me, and bobs his head in that way that old men have that could mean hello, goodbye, or fuck off. "Keep the change." He's out the door.

I grab the cash and make change, throwing the tips in a big clear pickle jar behind me, because since Lauren is training me, they aren't mine to keep. She'll give me a cut at the end of this shift, which is kind of crap because even though I'm not very good, I am running my ass off, and I wish I could keep what little I am getting from the ones that feel sorry for me.

It goes on like this for a while, till Tyler is yelling again, and I can't avoid him anymore because Lauren is in the back changing a keg, and she doesn't think I'm ready to learn that yet.

"New girl!" I take the bar towel from the back pocket of my jean shorts and put it between us, wiping up his water rings, and trying to deflect. "Where you from, New Girl?"

"F-forks."

This little foot of the bar is going to shine.

Tyler smirks. "Where's that?"

"Washington. It's in Washington."

He won't stop smirking. I hate smirkers. James is a smirker.

"You work tomorrow, bumpkin?"

"I…yeah. I work tomorrow."

"All right. Tomorrow you pour me a decent beer." He lays the money for his meal on the table, and I scoop it up, managing to drop one of the quarters in the ice well as I do. He laughs, and he just won't stop laughing, and what an asshole anyway. He's what, five years older than me? Eight? Not enough to act this high and mighty. I'm working here, damn it. I'm not the one sucking down pissbeer on my lunch break. Fucking awesome success story, he is.

Lauren comes back from the keg room and blows out a breath at smartass with the wide smile and three-day scruff. "Pack it in, Tyler. You're gonna fall off your beams if you drink as much as you want."

He smirks. "Maybe I need me something to break my fall." His big dark eyes creep over me. "You lose this job, come find me."

Lauren snaps her towel at him. "Get."

She steps back toward this end's register and smooths out a wad of cash from her pocket. She faces the money quickly, puts some in the register, drops some in another pickle jar, and sweeps her hands toward the wreckage of lunch hour. Bottles, plates, pitchers, glasses, squeezed up and soppy rinds of lemons and limes litter the great expanse of black polished wood.

She sighs, and her second chin quivers. "Listen, we'll get this in a minute. I'm gonna give you a tip way more important than anything to do with Tyler, okay?"

I twist my white towel with the blue stripes in my hands and try not to think about how sticky my thighs are and how sweaty I am.

"The Cullens drink Diet Coke."

I look up in amazement, but no, she's not jerking my chain. "What?"

"Just what I said. All of them drink Diet Coke. Never regular. Never anything else. Always Diet. One of them comes up here, you pour them a Diet, and you stick one of these little black straws in it," she gestures to a plastic cup of stir sticks. "Every Diet gets a black straw, and every Cullen gets a Diet. Don't mess that up, and you're golden."

"Oh…kay. How, how many of them are there?"

She arches a brow at me. "A lot. All boys. Except Esme, but you'll meet her later. And they all drink Diet. You got it?"

"Yes. Diet Coke. Black straw."

She looks up into my face like trying to make sure I comprehend this simple bit of wisdom that belongs inside a fortune cookie. When she seems satisfied that I do, she takes my arm and leads me around the bar where she presses a five-gallon bucket into my hand.

"First, we get ice. Then we'll get the mess." She hoists a bucket just like mine, and I follow her around a super tight hallway, past the locked door of the office, to a mammoth ice maker that sounds like Darth Vader just before Luke takes off his helmet in Return of the Jedi.

She spends a couple minutes showing me how to hold this giant metal shovel-scoop thing and how to dig way down into the ice compartment at the back to bust up the ice that gets stuck and make room for fresh to fall and then she stands back to watch me. I suck at this, too. I'm getting maybe a quarter of the ice she is with each scoop, and a lot of it is ending up on the floor.

About the time I get so frustrated that an exasperated "Fuck!" slips past my lips, I catch a glimpse of something decidedly male through the straggles of matted, stinky hair escaping my long braid. I look up from the ice, and he breezes right along the hallway.

He's wearing a black Cullen's Roadhouse t-shirt, a pair of Levi's, and a fucking apron. Really. He's got a white apron looped low around his hips, just folded and tied around his waist like a dirty towel. His hair, a riot of gold and red and brown, but mostly red, flops into his eyes, which are – maybe brown? Green? I'm not sure, he's flashing me a smile, and he's gone. I watch him take the two steps down into the kitchen, his ass perfectly framed by the apron at his hips. His long fingers are curled around a Styrofoam cup in one hand, and a clipboard in the other.

If my thighs weren't already soaked with beer and ice, I might have a problem right now. He had dimples. At least one anyway, and a smile that just lit me up and blew me out in front of God and country and Lauren.

I become aware that I'm clutching her arm when she says, "Ow. Bella?"

"Who was that?"

She rubs her arm and glances back toward the kitchen, into the din of noise where Adonis just descended. "Who, Edward? He works here, manages back of house."

"Edward. Oh. Edward Cullen?"

"Yeah. Remember what I said –"

My mouth is dry but my pussy is really, really wet. I don't care how gross it sounds. It's true. I think I may be working on a contact orgasm, but without the contact. I rasp at her, testing out if my voice still works. "Diet Coke."

"Yep."

The shovel/ice spade in my hand is so cold, but it feels good because it's so much hotter in here than it was before, and God knows it was hot then.

"Does he have a girlfriend?" I don't care how forward I am. I want to know.

Lauren's nose snurls. It's universal chick body language for this shit is complicated. "Yeah. They just moved in together a few months back, I think. We don't see her much in here. But they're still together."

"Not for long."

I don't realize I've said it out loud till Lauren starts laughing but I am serious as a fucking heart attack. I know, I know I said I was through. I swore off men. I moved here, even though it was James's fucking hometown, and I swore him and Jacob and all of them off, but fuck.

Edward Cullen looks sexy as sin in an apron.

I have to have him.


	2. Back of house

He's the owner's son, or one of them. I don't know what the rest of them look like, but if Edward is any indication, this job may not suck as much as I was thinking it might.

Emmett's the oldest, Jasper the youngest. Lauren tells me this as she counts down her drawer at the end of our shift on day one. Edward is the middle son, the easy-going one. I want him in my middle. Easy going, hard going, just going and yeah, coming. I can't explain it. I haven't felt that kind of instant attraction since…ever, really. No, not even James. James is a cad, a flirter, a schemer. Edward just smiled and I want to climb him like the last tree in the middle of a stampede.

Fortunately, I have bigger fish to fry. Lauren takes me back to the office and introduces me to Leah Clearwater, a wisp of a woman with bones where her wrists should be and a paleness that makes her naturally dark skin look like rancid chocolate milk. Lauren says she's in a bad marriage, something about a junkie husband. I guess it's the stress but she looks like she's bought out too many CVS allergy sections herself. Day manager, front of house, she is the yin to Edward's yang. I kind of want to hate her, just because she talks about him to the other servers like she's known him forever, which she probably has. She keeps a little radio on her hip, and she unbelts it when it crackles as she counts down the drawer full of cash Lauren just spent 15 minutes putting in order. "Tell Edward to order more ketchup. Nobody likes that house brand from Sysco."

Somebody on the radio crackles back but it's not him, so whatever.

Leah finishes the drawer and gives me a small smile as she presses a wad of cash into Lauren's hand. "You gonna make it?"

Why does everybody keep asking me that? I'm not totally breakable. And I wasn't that bad. "Sure," I say, trying to look convincing. "No problem."

"A few more days with Lauren and then you'll expo with me through lunch so you learn the order."

"Expo?" Bars have their own language, like video game geeks and Star Trek nerds. Who knew?

"Expedite. I make sure the orders are plated right during lunch, set up the sauces and sides, and get the trays ready for the servers. It's the best way to learn the menu quickly so you aren't so slow on bar when people want to eat. Back of house."

"The menu," I repeat. "Back of house?"

Lauren hands me a measly ten-dollar bill for a five hours shift. On top of the two dollars and seven cents I'm making an hour, that will just about not-at-all pay for the gas it took me to drive all over town for interviews and finally get this job.

"The kitchen," Lauren says, smirking. I hate smirkers.

But the kitchen?

Bingo.


	3. Styrafoam Secrets

Leah sidles up to the bar the next morning as Lauren is showing me how to clean out and ice down the wells. She takes the gun away, holds down the button for Coke and Sprite at the same time, and flashes me a grin that pulls the already prominent bones in her face even tighter.

"QT starts at 10:45. Booth 1."

Fucking shorthand, bar-speak.

And what the fuck with Coke and Sprite together? Gross.

"That's homemade ginger ale for her stomach. Nerves," Lauren says. I gape at her. She leans over to whisper conspiratorially while Leah moves up to the front of the bar and starts rolling up the giant blinds over the windows and turning on neon signs. "Her husband. She's very nervous. Smokes too."

Lauren is like the little chubby Scheherazade of Cullen's. She sees all, knows all, and can't wait to get away from it all.

"Okay," I say, pulling a beer pitcher of sliced limes out of the fruit cooler under the taps and arranging it at the wells with yet more little rubber mats. "QT?"

"Quality Time. It's what Esme calls our morning planning meetings."

Morning staff meetings as quality time? Esme Cullen sounds like a cunt. We shall see.

My well is decently set up and servers are drifting toward booth 1 for this mysterious meeting when the ticker tape from hell goes off.

Diet Coke.

That's all. Hmm.

I make the cup, and have just stuck the little black straw in when he materializes behind me. No apron. Darker jeans. His hair looks like he just crawled out of bed from fucking someone six ways to Sunday. He was probably fucking his girlfriend. Damn it.

He grins at me, a little lopsided, and takes the straw out of the cup. It goes into his mouth. He talks around it as he pours the clear plastic cup into a replica of that giant Styrofoam one from yesterday.

"Sorry," he says, and ooh, his voice is as good as his height, and the height is really, really good, because I'm easily 5'8," so he's got to be 6'2" or 6'3". "I have to have a lid for back of house."

Don't say something stupid, Bella.

"Oh, right. Because of contamination and stuff?" Oh, God. He's not tainted. Shut up! "I would've poured it for you but we don't have any of those cups around here."

He's working that straw with lips, his tongue, and arching one eyebrow up at me. I never could do that. It's so James Bond, effortlessly cool. I think my eyebrows are paralyzed maybe, along with other parts of my anatomy at the moment.

"Here," warm fingers touch my wrist. "I'll show you the secret."

Oh, please. Please, do.

Those hot fingers go around my forearm and he tows me away from the bar and down the hall toward the office. We stop at the ice machine and he drops my arm. I can't register anything besides the lack of contact and that straw in his mouth. I bet he's one of those guys who can tie cherry stems into knots, too. Oh, God. Isn't there some kind of law against being this turned on before lunchtime?

He taps the top of the ice machine and I drag my eyes away from his mouth long enough to notice a plastic-covered sleeve of the giant Big Gulp-style cups and matching lids.

"There you go. Now you know where the treasure is, you can't go running off."

"I would never." I try for coy, smile up at him, but I really just want to grab him and push him out the door behind us that leads to the dumpsters and the oil recycling. Alleyway sex. All the hottest man-stealing, home wrecking whores are doing it these days. Oh, help.

"Well, that's settled. We better get you back to Leah and Lauren."

I start to follow him, but the hand with the Diet Coke sweeps out for me to go first, and so I do, walking slowly, trying not to twist my ass so much I look ridiculous, while remember to keep my shoulders back and my sway a little more.

My back feels hot. I can feel the prickles all along my neck. I wore the shortest jean shorts I could find today. The uniform is jeans and Cullen's shirts. Or jean shorts. Daisy Duke, you blessed redneck, thank you for showing me the light. Let's hope he sees it, too.

He hangs back behind Booth 1 while Leah yammers on. I have no idea what she says. He's looking at his clipboard again. I don't think he's listening either, but I don't know.

"We've got to make a liquor order tomorrow," Leah says. She shoots me a look. "That's you and Lauren. Day bartender checks out all the old bottles so I can order."

That explains the dozens of empties lined up at the other end of the bar. Sort of. I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to do with any of them, but I nod like I do, and then immediately look back to Edward to see what he's doing.

He's watching me. As soon as my eyes land on him, he's back at his clipboard, and oh, he's caught. It could just be everybody stares at the new girl when the day manager calls her out, but I prefer to think it's the shorts. He's bewitched by the denim and skin. Come here, and let me charm your snake for you, Edward.

He's smiling at whatever is on that clipboard, and it's such a nice smile. One dimple and very straight, white teeth. He looks trustworthy, which is ridiculous, because he is a man, after all. The only trustworthy ones are dead. Or gay.

My phone beeps as QT breaks up and I miss him walking away as I read the text from Alice.

"I'm in town. Your landlord stopped by.

He wanted to remind you that there are NO pets.

Put Bails cat carrier under a quilt in the bathroom.

He was not amused."

I have got to make some fucking money. I need to pay a pet deposit.

And buy new underwear.


	4. Geronimo

Tyler likes the shorts.

This is an unfortunate side effect for which I was not prepared when I picked them out for Edward. He's ordered a round of pissbeer for him and Red Bandana, Blue Bandana. He's scrutinizing my thighs as I lean up to the taps to pour it.

Lauren says you don't pour level unless you're in a big hurry and have to just start pitchers and let the taps run while you make drinks. With individual glasses, you tip the glass to the side at about a 30-degree angle as the beer pours. Voila. Smooth silky piss with a healthy but not too chunky foam.

"You got legs up to your ass, New Girl. I may have misjudged you."

"I wish I could say the same."

"Rawr. Listen to that, boys. She's feisty, today."

"She's feisty everyday."

I drop the glass. All the pretty pissbeer seeps into the grates beneath the taps as I flip it off and turn around. My heart is jumping out of my chest. It's the Olympic pole vault in there and oh, the agony of defeat.

Jacob Black is standing at the end of the bar, cash in hand, looking massively other when compared to the middle-aged, very white, construction-worker lunch crowd today.

Tyler's grin is sharp enough to cut my limes. "You her boyfriend or something?"

Jacob says "Yes," at the same time I say, "No." He glares at me while Tyler and the peanut gallery watch with wolf eyes.

"Do you want a drink?"

"I don't know about this guy, but I do. Bumpkin's got butterfingers." Tyler's so funny. Asshole. I turn away from Jacob and pour three perfect glasses that I place softly in front of each guy while desperately plotting my next move.

"Do you want a drink or not? I'm working."

"I would like a moment of your time."

"I'm not on break."

"When are you gonna come back and party with us? We miss you, Bells. I miss you."

Tyler hoots but a dirty look from Jacob, probably about the same 250-pound weight, but wired with thick muscles instead of beer cushioning, quiets him down.

Jacob's short for a dude. I'm almost looking him in the eye right now, across the bar, rocking back on the heels of my Asics. When I'm wearing three or four inch heels, which is every second that I'm not in here or on a run, I'm a little taller than him. I can't get serious with a short guy. He knows. This was fun for a while, to piss James off, to wipe James off of me when the time came, to help me forget the torment, but he's short. Come on.

White eyes and white teeth and dark, dark skin, I mean even for an Indian, he's dark. And it's summer, so he just bronzes. I can still hear James in my head, sneering at me while he bent me over his bathroom sink. "Did you fuck your little Indian? Did you pretend he was a black guy? You like those ones your mama doesn't like, don't you?"

I was gasping. He was going hard, almost too hard. It hurt. "Was he big like a buck? Did he fuck you this good?"

I couldn't speak because his fingers were in my mouth, and then he was coming, rattling me so hard I'd have flat line bruises against my thighs the next day where the porcelain cut at me.

Jacob was really good with picking up the pieces of what little I ever had to offer anybody. That, and he always had something to help me relax. He smells like clove, and a little bit of whiskey, because I think he starts his days with in it on his French toast.

"Come on." He's used to talking at the brick wall that is me. "Friday night? Come by. Just for a while."

I blink at him. Tyler's watching me with the biggest shit-eating grin. I mean, I bet they don't get this much entertainment in a 10-hour shift building whatever monstrosity is down the street.

"If I don't have to work," I say, and I don't choke on the words because I need to relax and Jacob is Linus' blanket. "Sure."

"Order up, Bella."

My head snaps around like the crack on James's clay pigeon thrower. I imagine myself shattering like the clay discs, and falling, falling down into the field, lost to the world.

I almost trip getting over to the side of the bar to take the giant hot ham and cheese platter with the obnoxious amount of artery-clogging fries from Edward's hands.

"Thanks, Edward. You didn't have to bring this up!"

There's that dimple. His eyes are green, like deeper and sweeter than a Green Dragon at the end of a long night of drinking, green. Fuck me running, how much did he hear?

"I didn't see any runners, and it was getting cold. It's no trouble."

There's plenty of trouble up here already. I can lead you to more.

"Well, thanks. I really appreciate it. You want a pop?"

"Sure." He watches me while I get the gun and take the lid off his cup. "Better today?" He looks down the bar toward Jacob, and farther on, Lauren, checking out bottles from last night. I ignore Jacob's stare.

"Yeah, it's not so bad. I figured out how to pour the beer."

"She gives good head, man." Tyler raises his glass at Edward. Mother fuck. I can't even imagine how red I am right now. Corvette red.

Oddly, Edward colors up a bit, and it suits him so well, that flush, like how he looks when he's probably a little exerted, working at it, you know? "Watch your mouth, Tyler." He's gruff. Tyler's just smirking, hands up, like don't look at me. He looks like George W. Bush with that dumb shit smile.

"Hey, thanks again."

His head tilts. "Any time." One hand reaches up toward my head, and I think he's going to tweak my braid, but he grabs a napkin from the stack by the server station, and walks away, sucking down the Diet.

I turn and drop the plate in front of Tyler. "You are…unbelievable."

"Not me." He's already chomping a fry and using another to gesture toward me for the benefit fit of Red and Blue Bandanas. "You're twitter-pated."

"What?" I look but Jacob is gone. I saunter down to pick up the napkin I dropped there and fist the bill he left behind. It's a hundred, which is just… so Jacob, but I don't care. I need it. I stick in my pocket quick before Lauren notices. "Jacob's just a friend."

A server appears with the rest of the food for Tyler's friends and I hand it out and run for refills, getting them settled.

Tyler watches me, all smiles, as I rush around, kind of flustered still from the Edward-afterglow.

He swallows a hulking bite of his sandwich, mopping at the oozing cheese on his chin with his fingers.

"Not Geronimo. Cullen."


	5. Ghetto Grind

Alice is going to lap me if I don't get it together. She's practically treading water beside me, waiting for me to kick it back in gear. Nobody on this street looks like they run. This is part of the issue with living in Chicago. Physical fitness isn't high on the list of this particular ghetto community's priorities.

"What's the problem?" Alice, the model, the giraffe, or the gazelle, skinny little bitch who towers over even me. She's two inches taller and twice as intense. My rock of Gibraltar and friend numero uno. She'll be back on a plane in a few days. Her next job is back in Atlanta. It's too far. I need her help.

"Tyler calls me bumpkin. I should've never told him I was from Washington. It's not like I've never lived in a city before."

"It's not like you've ever lived in Washington. I mean, except as a fetus, or whatever."

"I know."

"So why did you?"

"I don't know. I don't want too much of myself here. I just want to work and disappear, you know?"

She huffs, and stops a second to adjust the string on her purple and blue Asics. We are serious runners. Distance over time. It helps Alice decompress between shoots and keep her figure in that nearly anorexic state that is required for her job but so unusual for a girl that loves to eat like she does. It helps me. It helps me…I don't know, exist.

She tightens her long ponytail while I jog in place. "Then you shouldn't have moved to James' hometown. And Jacob's. I mean, what the fuck, Bella?"

"I told you, I was supposed to have work here."

She wipes the sweat off her throat with the bottom of her expensive tee shirt. "Yeah, well. Couldn't they let you out of your lease? I mean, they can't have the most honest renters around here. Probably happens all the time."

I don't know how to explain it. I needed James nearby, so if I ever wavered, it would be easy to check up and see the evidence of why I moved on.

A ghetto cruiser slows down beside us and Alice flips it off with a perfectly manicured finger and begins to run again in earnest. We fall into a side-by-side pattern, with one of us easing ahead or behind when the sidewalk narrows with a fire hydrant or trash or broken concrete. The sky is steel gray, as ironclad as the walls we build around ourselves.

Run, just run. Stop thinking about James and Jacob…and Edward.

I wonder what his girlfriend is like? I want to know how old he is. He's the middle brother, and I just have no frame of reference, other than that Jasper stopped by before I left today, and mentioned classes at Loyola. Psych 338. That's upper level, so he's what? Twenty-one or 22? Almost our age. Edward could be 28 or 34. It's so hard to tell with men, and he seems so grounded, so far beyond me. Living with a girl?

That implies grown-upedness, commitment. Or it should. It doesn't have to, I know. I mean there's James. He tried to move me in and it was all just bullshit, a front, so who knows?

I don't want to fuck anything up for Edward. He's good. I don't know how I know this, but I can tell, he really is, and I am just a user, a loser, a loss. I don't want to suck him into my well. He probably thinks I'm a kid anyway.

What kind of woman snags a man like Edward Cullen? What kind of woman gets to crawl into his bed every night and lick those lips and wash away all his worries from a long day at work? I don't want to know.

I don't.

* * *

We eat Mexican for dinner and have margaritas and Alice moans about the white cheese sauce and how mad Enrique is going to be if he has to rip the stitches out of the panels on this one dress she's fitted for already.

We stumble back to my two bedroom, up the rickety wooden steps, straight up at the top of this old house that used to be beautiful before somebody spliced and diced it into low-level apartments. The windows are great though. Great big floor-to-ceiling in the living room, that angle around the way Victorians should. I always wanted a bay window as a kid, to read in, but this is better. My Big Lots ottoman is cheetah print, and Bails looks like a panther on it.

"Did you skin this kitty, Bails? You couldn't stand the competition, could you?"

He kicks up the motor on his purr-machine, my little black Corvette pussy, friend numero dos. He's not little anymore. He's fat. I should leash him and make him run with us. That's so funny I can't stop laughing, and I want to tell Alice, but she's missing.

I drag my drunk ass into the kitchen. I hear the shower running, but the bathroom door there that connects gives when I push on it. Alice is on her knees in leather leggings, puking.

It's not the food. She's had her fingers down her throat. Her makeup is smeary, black mascara tracks messing up her pretty face.

"We ran, baby. Please stop. Don't do this to yourself. You said you wouldn't do this anymore." I get a washcloth and start cleaning her up, getting the tears that are silently leaking out of her show-stopping hazel eyes. She doesn't speak. "You said you were well. Why did you lie?"

She blinks at me. "We're all liars, aren't we?"

I don't speak, and we just sit there, both of us sniffling now. I told her all about Edward at dinner, and Alice, who knows all, she told me to stay away, to save what's left of my heart.

I sigh, picking at my nail polish from my perch on the edge of the big old tub. I don't have a shower curtain. I can't afford one. "You're beautiful. They're not going to fire you if you weigh an extra pound."

She's mouth breathing. "I can't stop."

"Yes, you can. Damn it. Yes, you can!"

She reaches for the toilet paper, my last roll, and takes a wad to blow her nose.

"Let's go to Cullen's tomorrow," she says. "I want to see these Cullen boys."

So we do.


	6. Ride It Out

Leah's out sick today, supposedly not from nervous drug abuse, so evening Eric is managing front of house on day shift. He's an amiable balding man, the kind you feel sorry for because he's probably only early 30s and there's no way he's had a full head of hair since high school.

His hair situation, the lack of it, it's not stopping him from working Alice. I mean, he's embarrassing. Jesus, I hope I'm not that embarrassing about Edward. Am I that embarrassing around Edward?

Alice wore booty shorts, those retro high-waist ones, with some kind of strappy little half top and platform wedges. She's all Nantucket in the summertime and Kennedy cool. She looks a metric fuck-ton better than Taylor Swift in it.

Anyway, Lauren has taught me to do the bottle check out thingy, so I'm hanging out with a three ring binder and a bunch of sticky empty well bottles. Off brand rum, vodka, whiskey. Whiskey is popular here. I've probably checked thirty of those out already.

Alice gives me the signal, a bird in the hand when she's asking for a pop, and I point out a pretty neat local bookstore nearby and a pawnshop that might be of interest. She's gone before Eric can start mentally figuring what hair plugs might cost him.

Jasper breezes through just before the lunch rush is due. He's pulling at his hair, which is longish on top like Edward's but lighter. He's like the Diet version of the Real McCoy.

"Rough morning?" I pour him a Diet Coke and stick in the straw.

The straw goes between his teeth, just like Edward's. He orders Roadhouse Fries, and produces several thick textbooks before he answers, all easy on his words. Maybe he's not Cullen Light. Maybe he's Cullen High, I don't know. He takes laid back to clinical levels.

"Lotta work, but I got it," he says. "Just gotta Ride. It. Out."

Alice sweeps in the front door as he's exhaling slow on "out." The merciless Chicago wind has her black hair, which is flying around her bare shoulders as though it is constantly programmed for camera angles, which it probably is.

He turns and that smile, it spreads over his face, out from his lips, across both dimples, lifting his cheeks, his brows, his forehead, up and into the curls of his wild hair. He's a river, and she's the thrown stone. Brace for impact, Jasper.

Heaven help us all.


	7. Roadwhore Fries

"You didn't tell me his brother was hot."

Alice is hissing at me while Jasper's in the bathroom.

"You didn't ask, remember? You were too bent on 'Stay away, abandon hope all ye who enter Cullen's Hell."

I grab a bottle of Malibu Rum and try to flip a page in the binder but my sticky fingers snag and I rip it. Mother fuck.

"Seriously? What's the oldest one look like? Are they like, Thor and Loki? Who's hotter than Loki? Captain America?"

We both shake our heads and giggle. We say it together, like kindergartners jinxing each other for a pop, "Iron Man!" We keep trying to straighten up, but it's tough. She's so right. Emmett's probably RDJ, complete with gadgets of gorgeousness.

Jasper returns, carrying the basket of food he ordered himself, and slides onto the stool in front of me, right next to Alice. Cozy.

"You didn't tell me you had beautiful friends, Bella," he says, unrolling his silverware. He's watching Alice instead of the fries, and my, my, there is hunger there.

"Yeah, well. Just one actually, and she's like the wind. She blows in, and she blows out." I am searching for tape now, ransacking the drawers by the register so I can fix the stupid book.

"You travel, Alice? Work or pleasure?"

I try not to snort. He said 'pleasure,' and she's gone. I can see it in the way she sits up straighter, pulling her shoulders back a little and the girls up. Something hard and plastic in the drawer stabs my fingers. Aha! Scotch tape, somewhat yellowed but usable.

"I travel for work." She's sipping at her Diet Coke, trying to keep her hands still I bet. "I'm in the air more than on the ground, I do believe."

Jasper blinks. "Ah do believe? Where are you guys from?"

"Atlanta." We're doing it again, talking together, like twins. George and Fred Weasley have got nothing on us. I mean, except that awesome ginger hair. One of these days I want to be a redhead, or at least sleep next to one. Jasper, go tell your brother I need a volunteer from the audience, please.

Jasper has his fork in those fries, which Tyler has already made clear to me are the pride and joy of Cullen's. He removes his black straw from his mouth, and he's tapping the edge of the red wire basket and leaning in to Alice's bare shoulder.

"Southern girls. Well, then, you must appreciate great food." He cuts a generous portion of the heart attack in front of him and holds it up on our eye level. "Roadhouse fries, crinkle cut. Cheddar cheese sauce. Crispy bacon, and for the crowning glory–" he dunks the fork in a dressing container, "Cullen-made ranch." He nudges Alice's shoulder. "Try a bite."

There's no way. I guess everybody has a walker moment, when you either pull out a chair and get comfy with a possibility or you walk, and this is it for Alice and ol' Jasper. There's no way in bully hell she'll eat any of that today.

Of course, I'm right because she's shaking her head, flipping her hair over her shoulder and using one hand like a shield to put distance between them. "Oh, oh, no. I really shouldn't. But thank you kindly."

"Thank you kindly? I don't know what I need to do to get you to say that again, but you still need to try these. I mean you have to. You don't want to insult a Cullen, do you? These are the secret to the family's success. They're putting me through college."

The ranch is dribbling off the fork into his cupped open palm beneath. It pools there as he lifts the fork toward her again.

As it turns out, I know just jack shit when it comes to how anybody ought to react to a Cullen, because while I'm calculating how hard she's going to come down on him, she's done it. Alice leans forward and closes her deep red-stained lips over his fork and eats the whole damn bite.

He's cleaning the ranch off his hand and watching her chew, slowly, like she's never had fries before in her life, like she hasn't eaten in two weeks and these are the finest chocolate truffles in Switzerland, just savoring all that cheese and grease and fat. He takes his thumb and swipes the corner of her lips, taking away a tiny smear of ranch and oh, hell, did he really just lick his finger? He did. That is just too hot to be gross. Okay, it's still a little gross, but mostly hot.

"What is it you do for a living, Alice –?"

Poor Alice can't speak. The finger trick and food porn have apparently rendered her senseless because she just sits there on her stool, blinking at him.

"Brandon," I say. "She's Alice Brandon, and she's a model."

That smile is back, and all 150 watts of it are trained on my worldly, sophisticated, twitter-pated bestie. He cuts more fries and pushes the basket over to her.

"Well, of course you are."


	8. Southern American

Jasper, as it turns out, has a world of talents between his mouth and hands. He's ordered food for Alice, which she is enjoying relatively guilt-free (a Southwestern salad with grilled chicken, chunks of avocado, salsa and a small handful of crushed Cullen-fried tortilla chips), and now he's talking away, proving a better informant than if I'd actually paid him for his trouble.

"I'm going to graduate early so I can get started on med school. I mean, Edward and Em have pretty well got the family businesses covered."

"Med school?" Alice whistles. "That's ambitious."

He polishes off the last of their fries, his knees knocking hers on the stools. I don't know what happened to Alice's bubble, her sphere of personal get-the-fuck-outta-my-space, but it's gone, popped, penetrated. Heh. "Right. And Paris, Milan and New York? You're not ambitious at all, are you?"

"I get paid to smile and walk. Okay, glare and walk."

"And I bet you do it so well."

I clear my throat. "What does Emmett do? I've never seen him here."

Jasper tears his eyes away from Alice and the salad of sin. "Oh, he manages our Michigan Avenue location. Cullen's Café? It's fancier, but you know, we keep the Roadhouse Fries."

"Oh."

"Yeah, Edward's up there on Tuesday and Friday. And Jessica really likes it up that way."

Jessica? Jessica. Ugh, how unbelievably mundane. She already sounds like trailer trash. Does Chicago have trailers or just tenements? I don't know. Don't care. I don't like her.

Alice pauses, a healthy chunk of avocado nearly to her red lips, and fixes Jasper in her sights. "Oh? What does Jessica do there?"

Jasper's smile drops away from his face for the first time since Alice walked through the door. He steals a piece of chicken from her salad and chews slowly. I recognize a distraction when I see one, and think about speaking, but apparently Alice has recovered and is back to doing what she does best – being a pro.

"Does she work for the Cullen's, too? That must be really nice, being so close to her boyfriend every day." She's licking a bit of that chili lime dressing/nectar off one nail and leaning close to Jasper. It's his turn to blink. Chicken chewed, he cannot escape the tractor beam of her eyes.

"Oh, no," he ducks his head but his attention is back on her almost immediately. "She doesn't work. She used to be a clerk or something, but she hasn't worked in a while. She just really likes that area so she hangs out when Edward is up there."

She doesn't work. Like, at all?

"Oh, that must be nice," Alice says, all sweet and sugar and not a bit judgmental, although I know that in her mind, she's screaming like I am, 'Wtf? He's not old enough to be a sugar daddy.' "I like working, but it can get tiring, living out of a suitcase."

"I think life tires Jessica," Jasper says, and then realizing maybe that's he's calling out his brother's girlfriend to near strangers, he straightens and turns the conversation like a master sailor cutting away from a storm. "But that's why we all need to a vacation. I should take one, sometime. Have any recommendations? Where's your favorite place you've ever been?"

She doesn't think about it. "Nawlins."

"Say again?"

"New Orleans," I say, stressing the second half of the last word out, like Ore-leans. I drop six more bottles of vodka into the giant trashcan next to me, and shelve the liquor checkout binder. "You may need an interpreter sometimes. We speak Southern American."

"You know who loves a southern accent?" Jasper hands off his Diet Coke for a refill.

"Who?" I stick in another black straw even though he already has one. It's looking ragged, that straw.

"Edward." He pulls out the old straw and starts defiling the new one with lips that favor his brother's, full on bottom, thinner on top, well-defined arch. "Yeah, he's a sucker for 'em. Has been since he discovered Daisy Duke as a kid."

I just smile, and he chews his straw, kind of appraising me.

"Well, I declare. He must get a kick out of us." Me. He can get a kick out of me, or a push into me, whichever. Whatever.

"Yeah," Jasper says, swiveling his stool around between Alice and me. "Yeah, maybe he will."


	9. Double Jeopardy

**Sunflower Fran recced this on her FB, she said. I am deeply appreciative. Thank you all for taking a chance with me. **

Leah Clearwater needs to eat. It could be so many years of living in the shadow of Alice, the vomiting vixen, but I can spot an eating disorder the way fat people can spot a Twinkie. I mean that kindly, as I love both fat people and Twinkies. My grandma was a fat type two diabetic till the day she died, and I will never forgive Hostess for not getting its shit together in time for her to live to see the revival of her beloved yellow sponge. I mean, really. Those Sara Lee heaven cakes, or whatever, were just not the same. Every time I snuck one to her in the nursing home she'd glare up at me, like, I know what you're doing, kid, and I am not that stupid.

Leah doesn't eat much of anything. I mean, sure, she orders lunches and picks at them. She enjoys the hell out of those little packages of oyster crackers Edward keeps by the soup vats in the kitchen. She eats those the way drunks eat peanuts, but that's it. Actual sustenance evades her, and I wonder that no one has seen it. Even Lauren, with her all-knowing eye, blames it on nerves over the addict husband. My theory? The addict husband is an abusive piece of shit, and this is what she controls since he's untamable – food – the lack of it.

She gets me from the bar just before lunch rush hits, and Tyler isn't happy about it.

"But I need her. She's just learning how to pour a good beer. I was thinking about making her make me a gimlet today. See if bumpkin has ever heard of one." He's eating a calzone today, heavy on the sausage and peppers. This guy, he's sliding toward diabetes himself, or a heart attack maybe. I mean, not that I care, because I don't. He's still an asshole.

Leah steals a piece of ice from my well and crunches it. The bones in her neck work as she chews. "Do you know what a gimlet is, Tyler?"

"Of course."

"Okay. What's in it?"

He cuts a big bite of calzone and dunks it in his marinara. "I'm not telling you. It'll ruin the surprise for her. Make her do her homework. She doesn't know any drinks. She's a fucking embarrassment of a bartender."

"You should be a motivational speaker," I say, popping my towel on the bar by his glass. "I bet your co-workers would just fucking love it if you went on the road."

He chews, smacking his lips and making a big show of enjoying all the bread and beer. "Sticks and stones, New Girl. You kiss Geronimo with that mouth?"

I blush. I can't help it, and seeing that he's won this round, he opens his mouth to go for Double Jeopardy but Leah pulls me off down the hall toward the office and kitchen before he can wager all he's won.

"Lauren, come deal with him," she says. "Bella's going to learn to expo."

I follow her down the two steps, and she hands me an apron and jerks her head toward a stainless steel sink. "Suit up, wash up, and meet me in front of the line."

I scrub in, ready to dissect the lunch rush menu, and then move on to trying to figure out the strings on this apron. I hope gimlets are easier, because this thing has more knots than a redneck Christmas float.

The warmth registers first, and then the smell of peppermint, which I suppose goes along with the Christmas theme. His hand is at my waist, drawing the apron away from me. "You're expo'ing today?" He's got hard candy in his mouth. What is it with this family's oral fetishes? "These aprons are crap. Come here. I'll give you one of mine."

I follow Edward, because of course I will follow him anywhere, and straight to hell if I don't back away soon, probably. His corner of the kitchen is over near the back. He runs the length of it, from the fryers to the line to the ovens, but his make table and freezer is over by the pizza oven, and so is a worn paperback (a western I don't recognize) and his Big Gulp of Diet.

He reaches up onto the top of the stand up cooler, the one where he puts pizza ingredients, and pulls down a better apron. No knots.

"Hey," I say. "Thanks! You are full of surprises."

"Turn around," he says, and I do, trying not to gulp, but oh, fuck me. Why can't we be naked and having this conversation?

He folds the apron in half and I raise my arms a little so he can pull it around me like his. When it's knotted, I wish he'd smack me on the ass, but he's professional now, mostly. He's wearing a black Cullen's shirt again. They have every color of the rainbow but his are always black. It suits him, brings out the fern quality of his eyes and the warm tan on his arms. I wonder if he's got a farmer's tan? I can't picture him walking around without a shirt on much. He doesn't seem like the type.

"There you go."

"I owe you one."

"You don't."

"Sure I do."

"No," he's shaking his head, his lips quirking a little, and that dimple is there. "It's better if you don't."

"Why? You helped me out."

"Exactly. Just helping out. I don't want to collect on it."

He has big hands, weathered hands. I can see a few pearly white scars and the deeper lines on his forearms that are probably pizza oven burns. I want him to collect.

"That's a shame," I say, smoothing my apron for something to do, somewhere else to focus.

"Is it?" He's looking at me, really looking.

I want to wear a big button that says, "I will fuck a Cullen. Ask me how." What do I have to do, spell it out? What's he mean, is it? He looks predatory but also…cautious. Like I'm the dangerous one? Now that's a joke.

"Bella!"

We both jump. "Where'd you go? We've got orders."

The bastard order tape goes off, printing a round of orders that quickly string to the floor, and he's gone, already in motion at the oven as he rips off the tickets and hangs them.

I'm trying to like Leah, to cut her some slack because she's so obviously got issues, but a cockblocker is a cockblocker.


	10. Chicken Boob

"That one gets Jerk sauce, not barbecue. See the seasoning on the chicken? That's Caribbean jerk not pepper."

I think she's serious, but she could be screwing with me.

"Jerk sauce? What's that?"

"Emmett's splooge." Seth Clearwater is funny in that way that little brothers are until they do something stupid in front of your crush and you want to smack them in the back of the head.

Luckily, Edward beats me to it. He flicks him in the back of his dark head as he walks by on the way to turn a pizza. "Shut it, Seth."

It's just dawning on me that Edward is kind of the language police around here. Mother fuck. That could be a problem.

People seem to have this preconceived notion that Southern girls are all cotillions and debutante balls and Southern Living home décor and Go Bama! In my pearls and college colors at an upscale sports bar. Those people read too much Southern Living, post Lindsay Beirman. I hate that guy, which pisses me off because I wanted to love him. I wanted to be able to say to Dad, 'Look, here's a gay guy who is awesome.' Dad still isn't sure about gays. He is blue collar, Georgian to a fault, loving of all but just not sure about the rubbing up of male bits against other male bits. He tends to take that, 'well, as long as I don't have to see it' angle, which is ridiculous, because why should anyone hide away love? Anyway, Lindsay was not helpful, with Dad or in promoting real Southern culture, because I can tell you that Southern girls who live in those eco-friendly little houses and drink champagne and eat figs and roast pork belly (or pay someone to) or whatever the fuck, they aren't my people. They are a tiny little minority the rest of sneer at for getting above their raisin.'

The rest of cuss. The rest of work hard and long and are smart as whips, yes sir, but thankful we are also pretty because ugly runs bone deep, y'all. You can't paint that stuff away, wash it off, or pray it down. I mean, there is nothing uglier than an upstart Southern girl, putting on airs, and there is nothing prettier, damn straight, than a single mama working double shifts at the Dollar General and the Sonic to feed her babies and put herself through night classes at the community college. Small wonder we cuss. The fate of our culture rides not on our men, but the women. We will love you up when you need it, feed you, clothe you, whoop you, and tell you to fuck off the second you take us for granted. Why doesn't anybody ever ask me to write a Southern Living lifestyle article? I would tell them what's up.

What's up is moving away and finding myself doing stuff I never thought I'd do, in a town I should have stayed out of, to remind myself of my sin and make Dad proud again. Oh, he'll tell you he's always been proud, but he wasn't. I did the wrong thing with James, and he knew. He knew.

Seth Clearwater isn't of age yet, and I think about this as I try really hard to reign in the pity party I'm throwing for one right now. Maybe Edward thinks I'm too crass, and maybe Jacob is as good as it gets, and maybe I should stop cussing in front of this kid, who can't be more than sixteen. No way.

I lose track of how many more Jerk chickens we plate and sauce, because it's on special today or some shit, and finally Seth cackles, over at the grill where he's dropping two more breasts to sizzle.

"Seriously, though, this shit is awesome," he says. "Best chicken ev-arh."

"Really?" I say, hunting for ranch in the stand-up color across from the line. Jasper wasn't kidding. Roadhouse Fries are better sellers than beer, I swear.

"Really," and he throws down another chicken breast, rubbing his face with the end of his apron, and adjusting the silver hoops in his ears. His arms are shiny with tats, and it's just ridiculous. He's a little big talker. "You want one for lunch when it slows down?"

Leah is ignoring him, pulling tickets and pointing to the red words on them that show me which sauces to grab and when there are items from the salad line that I have to go fetch to add to the platters before they go out.

"Um, maybe. How much is that?"

Leah shoots me a look. "Didn't I tell you? You get a free lunch if you work more than a five-hour shift. Six bucks or less, but pop is always free."

Yeah, she forgot to mention that. I haven't been eating much, mostly because I refuse to let Alice keep buying, even if she does have more money in a pair of her shoes than I have in my entire sock drawer.

"Okay, yeah, I'll try some of this world's best chicken boob," I say, and Edward, who is moving so fast back by the pizza oven that sweat has stained his collar an even darker black, cough-chokes.

"What? You don't like boobs?"

Seth is laughing, flipping his metal spatulas high in the air like a freaking circus juggler. "Edward's an ass man, right, dude? Legs and ass." He ogles my shorty jean shorts, and grins.

Edward says "Shut it," and the order tape goes off. He's swinging that big wooden pizza flipper like a skier's pole, whip, whip, check it, pull it, drop it, cut it, plate it, and ding. Take 'er out. I could watch him all day, the way his shoulders roll, and he stops with a hand to his neck, and the sweat just pours. Yes, yes, it's hot in here.

I drop a ranch container, and Leah glares at me. When I return from the back with a wet towel to mop it up, Edward is heading out to the service bar in the downstairs section of the roadhouse. He's got a plate full of food and his drink. His skin is gray, sweaty, and kind of unwell. The fries are jumping around on his plate where his hands are shaking so badly.

What the hell? Surely he's not that pissed about a little ribbing?

He's gone.

"Runner! I need a runner!" Leah says, her reedy little voice echoing over the din of tickets and chopping knives and fryers gurgling. No servers appear, and she waves a ticket at me, and hands me the heaping tray of salad and burger and bubbly artichoke dip.

"Take this to 14 and don't screw it up. Carlisle and Rosalie are out there."

"Who?"

"The owner. And Emmett's girlfriend. Family." She strings out that last word like she's talking to a 2-year-old.

I stare back.

"Move!"

So I do.


	11. Welcome to Cullen's

Jasper and Edward get it honest. And by 'it,' I mean the solid good looks, the height, and the charm. Edward favors him more than Jasper. They both have that burnished dark hair with the red cast to it. They both have the ridiculous height and the green eyes and the single right dimple. Carlisle is Edward, forty years on and beautiful in that way middle aged men always are that is so fucking unfair when we women are getting varicose veins and hairs on our nipples.

Carlisle has a newspaper in his hands, cracked open to the business section, and he's staring down his reading glasses at me.

"Well, hello there," he says. "I don't believe we've met before." All I hear is trust. Bottle up the essence of Jimmy Stewart and what you get is Edward's daddy. Come to think of it, Edward's a shade like Stewart as well – tall, handsome, quiet, and fair-minded in his work. The elder glances at Edward, who is sitting in the corner of the booth opposite him next to the woman.

Edward doesn't look up. He's already put away half a cheeseburger and doesn't seem to be slowing down. The bar towel that matches mine that usually rides in the back pocket of his jeans (like mine) is lying on the table next to him, and whenever he isn't using two hands to eat, he's clenching it with his left while he shovels in fries with the right. The sweat is still rolling off him.

"I'm new," I say, since Edward clearly isn't going to do any introductions. "I just started this week on day bar."

I take a not so wild guess and slide the salad down in front of Rosalie. She gives me a mega-watt Maybe She's Born With It, Maybe It's Maybelline smile as she unwraps her silverware.

Rosalie must have been born straight from the sea, stepping out of her clamshell like Aphrodite with perfect hair and perfect skin and goddamn matching shoes. It's possible I watch too much of anything Sarah Michelle Gellar has ever been in, but it's true. Rosalie is a sight.

"Well, welcome to Cullen's," Carlisle says as I try to reign in my staring. Is this what all the Cullen women look like? Because I don't stand a snowball's chance in hell.

"Thanks," I say, transferring the rest of the food to the table. I lay out small plates and extra napkins for the artichoke dip without dropping anything or knocking over what I assume are their frosty glasses of Diet Coke.

As focused as Edward seems on his lunch, Carlisle and Rosalie seem supremely uninterested in theirs. The patriarch of the Cullen clan glances at the food I've laid out and speaks again before I can scamper back to the kitchen.

"So how are you liking it here so far –?"

"Bella. Bella Swan."

"Bella Swan."

He seems genuinely interested. He's folded his paper and is waiting for an answer.

I want to fuck your son. I want to take him home and wash away the sweat in my giant only decent thing about my apartment bathtub, and then get to know him better between rounds of marathon sex.

"It's nice."

I'm a real conversationalist, no?

Rosalie takes a sip of her drink and jumps in, trying to draw out intelligent words from the idiot standing in front of her with the messy braid and dirty apron.

"I'm Rosalie Hale, Emmett's fiancé," she says, and I look around a little, expecting the clouds to part and the angels to sing, but of course we're inside, and as usual it's kind of dark in here. "Have you met Emmett yet?"

"Oh, no. Not yet. I guess he doesn't work down here much?"

She smiles again. Damn, those teeth are blinding. I bet she gets them professionally whitened. I've used those Crest White Strips before and my teeth never come out looking like that.

"No, we're usually up town but we have a family staff meeting today." She flips her wavy hair, honey blonde and full of depth, so if it's a dye job like most blondes it's a good one. Pricey. She manages not to look like she's preening. I mean her hair is really long, like down-to-her-butt long, so I guess it's less about preening and more about not having artichoke ends. "Esme will be in later."

"I haven't met her either. Erik hired me."

"Have you met my other son, Jasper?" Carlisle is digging into the artichoke dip, and after days of Ramen and the McDonald's dollar menu the smell alone makes me want to hover so I can soak up some cheese and spinach by nasal osmosis.

"Um, yeah. He comes in for lunch usually. He and my friend Alice kind of hit it off."

"Alice?" Rosalie says, her blue eyes alight like she just won the best Chinese sweat shop bear at the county fair shooting gallery, but Carlisle is also talking, and by weight of that deep voice he wins.

"So the only contact with the family you've had are Jasper and Edward?" He looks over at Edward again, who is polishing off the last of his burger. "I hope they've made you feel welcome?"

He's barely touched me yet while Alice and Jasper are probably off right now talking cadavers and Cartier. Is that fair, I ask you?

"Um. Sure."

He's looking at Edward again, who seems really involved with the rest of his fries and nacho cheese sauce.

Carlisle turns back to me with a smile. "Well, I hope you like it here, Bella, and if there's ever anything we can do for you, just let us know."

I smile back and take a couple steps toward the service bar before Rosalie can pounce on the Alice thing.

"Sure. Sure. It was great to meet y'all," and then I am gone, wobbling a little on my Asics because Jesus Christ, that was awkward and I can't get back to the kitchen fast enough.


	12. Beautiful Belle

Charlie has always said that some women are made for work and some women are made for loving but the best women even make work feel like loving. I think he probably got it from Granddad when he was still rocking on the front porch down the road, before all the steak sandwiches at the diner stopped his arteries up tighter than a snare drum, but like most things out of his mouth, it's either true or an exaggeration of the truth.

Rosalie Hale is a worker, I can tell. Camped out near Edward's make tables on a stool, she's a busy bee. She's going through a spreadsheet of something on her shiny silver Mac and rolling through messages on her golden iPhone at the same time, but whenever Emmett looks her way, she is lit with love, not gonna hide it under a bush, on no, she lets it shine.

Emmett Cullen. What can I say about Emmett that can even begin to measure up to the giant he is? I don't mean giant like height, because he's the only one of the Cullen men who seems not to have inherited his father's wingspan. He is several inches shorter; enough that with Rosalie's heels they're pretty much even in height because she's tall like Alice. He's a moose, an impeccably dressed moose in a navy blue pinstriped three-piece suit that probably cost more than my rent and utilities combined.

He also likes 'em young, or he pays for some really great dermatology because there is no way in Hades that Rosalie Hale is a day over 25. She's firm and perky in all the right places, and I quail a little looking at her here, because I'm probably a little younger than her and I feel ten years older.

Like all the Cullens, Emmett introduces himself right away when he wanders through the kitchen where Leah and I are winding down the lunch expo'ing.

When I say my name, his big paw grips my grubby hand, and the gold nugget of a ring on his pinkie is warm on my palm from his body temperature.

"We got us a belle?" he says, cocking his head. "Where are you from, miss?"

"Atlanta. Well, Atlanta-ish. Close to there. It's on the outskirts. You haven't heard of it."

He's older than Edward, yes. I'm more confused than ever because like Carlisle, his dark hair has gray creeping in at the temples. He could be 35 or 45. Carlisle might be 55 or 68. They could be brothers, really, sort of ageless. Vampires.

"Ooh, listen to her, Rosie," and Rosalie looks up from her spreadsheets with a pen between her teeth, and a look, like, 'Oh, just humor him. The big baby.'

"Say goodnight," he says. "Come on. Say it, Miss Swan."

I blow out a breath and I'm getting red in the face, I can feel it. Edward is back at the pizza oven, but he's got the clipboard out again and he and Rosalie have been conversing about Sysco and markups and new appetizers. Now his eyes are on me, green like the money they obviously have so much of, and I am the little bumpkin, here to entertain.

I say it, "Goodnight," and I try so hard to control that 'i,' but I am Georgian to the core, and it comes out so strong, all the accent on night, like "gudnahyt," and he throws his head back and laughs, and back there in the top, he's got a gold tooth. It's a whole bicuspid of bling. Edward doesn't wear jewelry, not even one of the plain gold chains straining against Emmett's quarterback neck.

"You are lovely," Emmett says, and I try to breathe, and my hand instinctively goes to my hot cheeks. "Isn't she lovely, Edward? A real little belle."

"Beautiful." It's one word, and for a minute, we stare at one another, green to brown, Yank to southerner, and I think, did he say that? Bless his heart, did he really say it? "She's beautiful," and when he repeats it, I am just lost, clobbered. I need to take off all my clothes to cool down, preferably with him in the room.

And a quart of whip cream.

He picks up his ratty flannel shirt from Rosalie's corner, shrugs into it, and walks off with his clipboard toward the walk-in cooler. He mutters something about needing "more lettuce" and he's gone, leaving the three of us staring after him with open mouths, and me with a bleeding open heart and a tingly vajayjay.

Emmett recovers first.

"I'm so glad you're here, Bella Belle. Hot damn."


	13. Viper

Seth Clearwater makes good on his promise of Jerk chicken boob. He drops it off in front of me with a smart remark about needing to see some tit for tat, and I flip him off, signal to Lauren, and head for a booth in the corner where the servers take their breaks. It provides an excellent view of the big table downstairs by the service bar where all the Cullens, including Esme, are talking shop.

It's too early to say, but I'm not sure if I like Esme Cullen. Digging into the grilled veggies which are every bit as kickass as Seth promised, I covertly watch her with them. She wasn't as amused with my accent as Emmett, though he did point it out to her. She was nice enough, polite. Like Princess Diana, whom she favors very much, she seems calculating and a little cold. Blonde. So blonde, and so young sitting next to Carlisle and no one has explained, but I know, from the way Emmett and Edward both call her "Esme," and from the lack of age on her face, that she is not their mother. She could be Jasper's. It would explain his fair coloring, and it would also explain why she barely looks any older than Emmett. I'd be shocked if she was more than a few years his senior.

This isn't why I'm unsure of her. Men trade in; trade up, all the time. They hit midlife like a brick wall and they buy a Harley and start going out with some slut named Jessica or Cindi with an 'i.' The Jessicas of the world, they aren't to blame, right? It takes two to tango, two to tango, do the dance of love...And sometimes the Jessicas, the Bellas, we're just dumb.

I swallow hard. No, it isn't her age.

It's that hawkish look she gave me, that appraisal, sizing me up like I am competition, which is just fucked because she's twenty, twenty-five years older than me, and I want Edward. Obviously.

I just never got on with women. There's Alice, and there's nobody else, except old male friends I may or may not have gone down the yellow brick road with at some point. Women are catty. They are vipers where men are lions. They don't protect, don't rule. They bide their time and they strike.

Esme Cullen has struck before. I can see it in her sure as the world. It's in the way she leans over Carlisle and tucks herself into his hand that's massaging her shoulder, like a poor little bird wearing a rock the size of a doorknob on her left hand. I wonder how well she knows Jessica, and I wonder, too, how soon it will be before Jessica knows of me.


	14. Hemingway's Whiskey

Wild Turkey shows up after his shift is over, around four, with a fresh denim shirt on with pearl buttons. I pour his shot and after he pays, he asks for a Budweiser longneck.

"What brought you here?" he says, voice mournful like a freight train. His watery blue eyes watch me making quick work of a crate of limes. I need twelve pitchers full for tonight – a Thursday. It's a big night, Lauren said before she left for the day. Prep as much as you can. I listen to her, soak up her advice because after Saturday she's gone for good, and I still don't know my drinks. Tyler is a fucker, but he's right. I need to study those, and I need to practice this. This big blade feels very Halloween in my hand, Bride of Chucky, and it's so fucking sharp. I turn my fingers in the way she showed me, and I move the fruit to the knife instead of the knife to the fruit. Slice and slice and slice.

"A plane."

He pulls on his beard, which is more white than black and gnarly, but not quite full-on Duck Dynasty.

"You a student?"

"Not anymore."

"Got kids?" He resalts the rim of the bottle.

"Me? Lordy. No."

"You running from somebody?"

I think of James but manage to keep my face smooth. I'm gesturing with the knife now, and he's unaffected. I bet it's not the first time he's been on the other end of a blade, and I doubt it will be the last. He's like the Chuck Norris of dirty Chicago, this one.

"Look, man, I appreciate the concern, but this ain't the movie of the week. I've got student loans. I needed money. Simple as."

He fingers the smokes in his shirt pocket, glaring at me through heavy glasses that are a little tinted, even indoors. He's got gravel in his throat. It's all those cigarettes, probably. And I don't know, forty years of dust and concrete mix on jobsites.

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

I'm staring. "You read Shakespeare?" He has to. He didn't misquote it like everybody else.

"Careful there." He sets the bottle down a little harder than necessary. "Don't choke on your stereotypes, kiddo."

There's a commotion and I turn to see Edward, biceps rippling against his black tee shirt, carrying a five-gallon bucket chock full of ice in each hand. Everything in me jumps. Moth to a flame is a cliché, too, a stereotype, but God sometimes they fit. I know what happens to the moth.

Fucking hell.

My Asics are already carrying me away, down toward the end where he's hefting one up and pouring it into my well, when Wild Turkey sort of whisper hollers at me, "It will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."

I don't even turn around because he's down there, and ice is flying all around, catching what light seeps in this late in the afternoon from the front windows. He's aglow, and I just, I need him so much. I need to know him. I need to have him. I need him.

I don't even turn around. "Shut it, Papa," I say over my shoulder, and above the ice crackling, I hear Wild Turkey laughing.


	15. Jolene

**Thank you to SunflowerFran for recommending this on FB, and also to Wiltshire Glo, for her lovely review on RobAttack. I'm grateful to you ladies, and all of you who are reading, favoriting, and reviewing. I'm in high cotton, I swear. You are all too kind.**

"Hey, thanks," I say, sidling up next to Edward, and leaning back with both hands on a set of rubber bar mats. I don't knock over the pitcher of straws; thank Mary, Jesus, and Joseph. "You didn't have to bring these up. I was on my way back there next."

He looks down toward the cases of limes on the bar. "It's no big deal. I knew lunch had to be busy with all the food we went through, and Thursdays are always a big prep night."

That dimple kills me, and so does the sheer mass of him. He's not a kid or an overgrown frat boy obsessed with steroids and protein shakes. I'm not explaining it right. It's like, the difference between when you were in high school and crazy obsessed with boy bands, which are, as all older women know, a sex symbol for girls who haven't had sex. And then you grow up and discover the throwback awesomeness that is the likes of Frank Sinatra and Hank Williams, Sr. You know – real men – who have loved and worked and loved and touched…life. That's Edward. He's broad and strong and tall. His hands are scuffed all over, rough, from work it looks like, and at this hour, the shadow on his jaw makes me want to rub my face against it and feel the tingle of the roughness on my own cheeks and my lips. Whichever set is good. Both?

Definitely both.

He hefts the next bucket and kind of elbows me a little in the arm as he does so. "Besides, it seems like you and ol' Frank aren't exactly on good terms."

I glance down toward Wild Turkey. "Frank?"

He shakes out the last of the ice and grabs a clean plastic cup from behind me to level it around the well. His forearm is sort of boxing me in for about a half second. It's probably the best half-second of my entire week. "The ice machine." He laughs. "I mean you're speaking, but there seems to be a lot of cussing and name calling going on."

I fold my arms and grin at him. "You spy on me and Frank? I'm ashamed of you. Those conversations are private, Edward Cullen."

"Well, it wouldn't be so easy to eavesdrop if you weren't so loud when you two are going at it back there."

I don't speak. I can't. He just said 'going at it,' and all I can see is us dumpster-loving it up in my dreams. Fuck Frank. Give me Oscar the Grouch's can and fifteen uninterrupted minutes and this man would never want to fuck in a bed again.

The longer his words hang there the redder he gets, and just like before, the color does crazy things to my lips, one set of which I find myself chewing in frustration. The other set? I give up. Those suckers are goners.

"I, uh," he says, the warmth working it's way to the tips of his ears. "That, erm, that came out kind of …yeah."

My fingers walk over his forearm, hairy and hot to the touch. I try to control my spider hand, but I think self-control around Edward is pretty much going to go about as well as not cussing at Frank. It's possible, but it would require way more effort than I care to expend.

I give his forearm a little squeeze and manage a wink. "It's okay. I didn't mean to disturb you. I'll talk to Frank. I can be quiet when I need to be."

His fingers find the back of his neck and rub up through his hair. He's alternating between looking at the floor and me, doing that sexy one-eyebrow lift again, but he does take a step back. I look at the distance between our feet on those holey rubber mats and shake my head.

"That didn't really help, did it?"

He quirks his lips. "You are something." I glow. I really do. I can practically feel myself levitating, yogi-style. "Let's just, um, try this again, huh?" I nod, eager to please him, and he continues. "So, what do you think of it so far? It must be pretty different around here than where you're from."

He picks up a cup and starts pouring himself a Diet Coke. I hand him a straw. Nobody else comes behind this bar except Lauren and Leah, nobody, not even the Cullens, unless it's Esme. Lauren has drilled this into my head. Don't trust anyone near your wells, near your hard liquor, near the tip jars, or your drawers. Guard the booze and the money with your life.

I don't care. It's not my money or the liquor I'm worried about him stealing. And if I don't start answering him with complete sentences he's going to think I'm slow. I already know every time I open my mouth this far north people drop my IQ by thirty points. I have to step it up.

"Well," I drift back toward the limes, center bar. "This is probably the most nerve-wracking job I've ever had. I'm trying to keep up and all, but Lauren's a real pro."

He follows, notices some dirty pitchers in the sink, and reaches for the soap. "Lauren is a pro, but you're doing great. You'll get the hang of it."

My fingers close around the knife. I take a deep breath and try not to cut off my hand when he plunges his into the soapy water and starts washing for me. His left hand is covered in soap bubbles. There's nothing more erotic than a man washing dishes. I mean other than a man vacuuming. I fucking hate to vacuum.

"I don't know," I say, readying a lime and slicing for all I'm worth. All my tension goes into the fruit. Slice and dice, baby. Fuck and suck. "I don't know my drinks. I've never cleaned out the coolers yet. I don't even know how to change a keg."

He's plunging the newly washed pitchers into the second sink, where he's turned on hot water for rinsing. It drips down his forearm to his elbow as he pulls each one out and shakes it off. My eyes start to follow the line of the water sliding along his veins and arm fuzz and I nearly lose a fingernail. Fucking hell.

"Want some help?"

"Sure."

"Tuesdays are fruit cooler clean out day. Beer coolers are Sundays. Take everything out. Bleach the inside. Soap the racks. Get a stack of rags and dry it out. Put it all back. Kegs are as easy as checking the pressure on a car tire. But if you need to lift one, come get me. They weigh a lot." He eyes me. "More than you, probably. You're on your own with the drinks. I don't know anything about anything that isn't Boone's Farm or bought by Emmett."

It's the most words he's ever given me. I kind of wish I could record them and listen to them over and over, even though he's just being nice, talking shop. I just want to hear him talk to me. I don't care if he reads the phone book.

Okay. That's something Grandma would've said. I need to get a grip before I end up rushing home to knit him an afghan while I watch my stories. Real life cannot compete with Port Charles, don't you know?

"You are something, you know that?" He smiles as I turn his words back on him. And then the last of what he said hits me. "Boone's Farm? You sure you aren't from Georgia, too?"

The laughter he gives me as he's lining the pitchers up on clean rags to dry warms me up from the inside out. There are just all kinds of nursery rhymes up in here. Lauren is Scheherazade. He's the Pied Piper of Hamlin, leading me to ruination with warm arms and pruny fingers. Rosalie is Sleeping Beauty. Carlisle is Cinderella's Daddy. I don't know who I am. There aren't many home wreckers in children's literature.

I just…can't keep watching that dimple and his cleft chin. I turn back to the limes, ripping off sheets of plastic wrap to cover the pitchers I've finished so far. "Okay, Boone's Farm. I don't suppose you can conjure up some trees and about five hundred bucks while you're giving me all the answers?"

He's not looking at me. He's inspecting the pitchers really closely. Come to think of it, he hasn't looked me in the eye for most of this little conversation. He's been paying attention to the dishes.

He pulls the plug on both sides of the sink and the gurgle, gurgle, suck, and swirl sounds very loud in the momentarily quiet bar. "Lauren never has been known for big tip outs. Sorry. I know that part must suck." He starts cleaning out the sinks with a green scrubber. "You missing home? It is kind of concrete-ish around here. I know this place…"

"Yeah?" I put down the knife. "Hey. You can look at me you know. I'm right here."

He glances up, but his eyes are on the neons behind me.

"I am looking at you."

My hands go to my hips. "No, you're not." I do the 'I've got my eye on you,' thing, pointer and middle finger to his eyes, and sweeping over to my face. "Why won't you look at me? I swear I don't bite."

His eyes finally meet mine. His tongue peeks out just a little over his bottom lip, and I step forward. He's calling me to him. He's not using words but he doesn't have to. I don't know how this keeps happening. He's all, "I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance is futile."

I will be assimilated. From now on, I will service him. Or something.

"I'm looking," he says. "I see you."

Somebody smacks their hand on the bar and we both jump.

"Hey, can I get some change?" Esme says, tapping her fingers on a ten. "The internet radio's on the fritz. I'm going to go set up the jukebox."

It would be really bad manners to strangle his stepmother with my bare hands, wouldn't it?

"Absolutely, Mrs. Cullen." I plaster the second fakest smile in the room onto my face and take her money to the register. She is all smiles, mega-watt, bullshit smiles.

Edward gives me a wave and wanders back toward the kitchen, retying his apron as he goes. Oh, God. Don't fucking go. Please!

She takes the rocks glass of quarters I hand her and turns away without a word. A few minutes later, I am finishing the last pitcher of limes when the jukebox whirs to life.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me." I mutter it under my breath, even though there aren't any customers, even though Wild Turkey somehow wandered away in the middle of my moment with Edward.

Esme sets the nearly empty glass back on the bar in front of me on her way to the kitchen. "Here you go, dear. Keep the change." She smiles again. "Do you like this song?"

Lord forgive me, I smirk at her.

"Oh, I love it. Dolly is good people."

And then I pick up the glass and walk away from her, singing along sweet-as-pie, "I cannot compete with you, Jolene…"


	16. Cleavered

**Thanks to PattyRose for rec'ing this on FB. I popped in to thank you but then I chickened out since it's an open group.**

**For those asking, I post often. Several times a week - sometimes multiple times a day. But the stomach flu from hell has been turning us inside out for three days, so today's is shortish. Y'all are blowing up my inbox with follows and favs which makes you awesome. I'm thanking you with words. I'm flat busted most of the time, so it's that or dryer lint and peppermint candies.**

**Happy Turkey Day, my American friends! Eat yourselves into a coma and then have a little read with me. I'm stuck on everything by Counselor right now. xo**

Edward's gone. He didn't say goodbye. Seth is scraping down the grill for second shift when I clock out slowly in the service bar, totally looking around through the little window to the line for him but trying not to look like I'm looking for him.

"He's not here." Seth is squirting the grill with a bottle of something clear and the steam is rising up all around him. He works the scraper fast, moving with the fluid, and there's so much steam and heat, I half expect his tattoos to drip off his arms like watercolors.

"Who?"

What? Playing dumb worked for Daisy.

"Boss man. Him and most of the fam-damily cut out of here an hour ago. He drove today so he left early to beat traffic."

I blink, deer in headlights. Boss man. I get stuck on that for a hot minute, because oh, that sounds promising. I've never really been into being dominated, but I never met a hair puller or a spanker I didn't like. Maybe I could be the boss, though. Now that has possibilities…

"Earth to Bella." Seth waves his towel at me. "He's not here. Go home already." The big silver spacers in his ear lobes shake as he teases me. How is this guy related to Type A-OCD Leah?

"What? I wasn't looking for Edward." I'm searching for my train card and shoving my apron under the service bar into the uniform bin for cleaning. I am suddenly in serious need of a shower and an attitude adjustment. He left without saying goodbye and went home early, home to where she's probably waiting. Going off of Rosalie and Esme, I picture June Cleaver with the pot roast and pearls, but with sexy heels and Sofia Vergara hair and … parts. I try to keep the bitterness out of my voice but it's a piss-poor effort. "I try not to keep track of other people's boyfriends."

Seth scratches his chin with the scraper, a deep thinker for sure in deep thought. "Right on. And I am totally not going to destroy a fatty when I get out of here." He flips the utensil into the dish area across from the line. "But have it your way."

Fucking city men and their fucking know-it-all attitudes.


	17. J-e-l-l-o

**The plague has almost left my house. I hope. Thanks for your patience. Hope you had a happy Thanksgiving!**

**Thank you so much for all the alerts and reviews and messages and whatnots. I'm on twitter for those asking (babiesbrown). I made a FB. I am still figuring that out but I'm there by name - Tgb McCray**

**I signed up to auction off an EPOV outtake of this story or an additional chapter of The Real Deal for Phandoms for Philippines. The link is on my FB. Mine is lot #25. Bidding ends in like 6 hours and it's up to a whopping ONE DOLLAR for my story. Go bid. If not to do good, then to make me feel less pathetic. 3**

It's Rosalie who catches up to me in the parking lot, so apparently the entire Cullen clan did not leave the building.

She's the prettiest pack horse I ever did see, click clacking across the lot in four-inch royal blue Ferragamos, hanging on to her giant Michael Kors purse, an Italian leather laptop bag, a bottle of water, and her cell phone. Damn Alice and her total brand management. I cannot unsee these things.

She's not a bit flustered, despite the fact that it's easily ninety degrees out here and I am sweating like a whore in church. "I was wondering if you might consider doing me a favor, Bella?"

If the favor involves letting your soon-to-be brother-in-law facefuck me, then sure, I got that. Where do I sign?

"What kind of favor?"

"How do you feel about being a shot girl?"

Why do I feel like any position that has 'girl' in the title is probably illegal? "Come again?"

"Well, Esme mentioned that your tip outs hadn't been that great this week, and our shot girl is not what you'd call…dedicated. It's not a hard job. You just walk around the bar and sell Jell-O shots and shooters and stuff."

Her Majesty Queen Creepy Ass of Bitchlandia?

"Esme?"

"Yeah, I think Leah might've mentioned it to her, or maybe Edward." Her phone chimes and she turns it in her hand. "Oh, crap. I'm sorry, but let me just grab this real quick, okay? Edward probably forgot something again."

She takes the call as I'm nodding, sticks one finger in her ear to drown out the traffic rolling by, and walks about five steps away. I can hear her perfectly. "No, I haven't left yet. What do you need?" She pauses. "Yeah, I can go back in and grab it. What? No. I'm just standing here in the parking lot talking to Bella… Huh?"

She looks over at me and waggles the pinky on the hand she's using to clutch the phone. "Edward says hey."

Dear Vagina, heel!

I am the picture of nonchalance. I give her the disinterested chin dip and channel Andy Griffith. "Hey to Edward."

"She says hi. No, we're just chatting. About what? About stuff. Geez. Since when did you become a member of the Red Hat Club? You want me to ask her where she lives, too, nosey?" There's a pause. She's tapping her chin with one perfectly manicured finger. "I'm sorry! I was just kidding around. Bella isn't paying any attention to me running my mouth – are you, Bella?"

I'm wishing I still had my bar towel actually. It's not really that hot in Chicago, not Georgia summer bake the red clay under your feet hot, but this parking lot is black tar. It's so hot I feel like I could jump and make a dent in it. Talking to Edward, even second-hand? It's not helping with my case of the vapors. I manage a bored-looking shrug and reach up to wind my heavy braid into a bun, pulling the tail through until the swampy, ratty mess is at least off my neck.

She finishes up the call and steps back over to me, stowing her phone in one of the giant bags apologetically. "Anyway, where were we?" She's tapping her chin again and seems genuinely distracted.

"J-e-l-l-o?" I say, wiping my forehead on the sleeve of my shirt.

"Oh, yeah. Anyway, it's not hard. You just wear something cute. Eric will set you up with shots in the kitchen and you go back to him whenever you need more. Friday night. The other shot girl will be there, at least for a little while, to show you the ropes."

I cross my arms but think better of it when my skin sticks together. "And she's not gonna be pissed that I'm horning in on her territory?"

Rosalie laughs. "Oh, no. I think she'll probably be relieved. Her heart's really not in it."

"Does it affect my hours? I mean, I need the work at the bar since Lauren is gonna be leaving. I can actually keep my tips and stuff soon."

Her fingers are hovering over the edge of her Bambi-soft bag like she wants to go for her phone again but is trying to resist the urge. "No, no. Not at all." The next thing, though, she's pulling it back out, and tap tapping away. "Shot girls aren't hourly. It's not even pay roll. You just work for tips." She's distracted for a second while she sends something and her sleek little phone chirps like R2D2's skinny cousin. "We don't even care if you report any of it for taxes. It's pretty well under the table. Easy money."

I can't resist asking. "How much easy money?"

She's still fiddling with her phone. "Hmm? Oh, probably a couple hundred bucks. It's not bad."

A couple hundred bucks?

"You got yourself a shot girl," I say, and probably startle the hell out of her by pulling her hand away from her phone and wringing it in mine, so thrilled that I don't even care that my palms are sweaty and calloused while hers are cool and smooth.

Sometimes when the carpetbaggers come calling, you open the damn door.


	18. Mexican Standoff

**Many thanks to those of you who bid for an EPOV outtake of this story to benefit Phandoms for Philippines! Margey DeHuff Sebastian won it, and has been gracious enough to share. I will try to get it written before Christmas. Sunflower Fran rec'ed me again on FB. I am so grateful for all of you. xo**

When the door slams later, I stick my toe up to the hot water handle of the bathtub and turn it off. I lean back against the edge of the porcelain tub and holler into the front room so Alice can hear me. "For God's sake, I hope you brought alcohol. I'm gonna need a great big glass of 'forget Edward Cullen's hot ass' before this night is over."

She sticks her head around the bathroom door for a split second before disappearing back into the living room. Her hair is in one of those elaborate retro updos that I can't make work to save my life. "Jasper's here," she says, eyeballing me. "Put some fucking clothes on."

Well. I swear.

By the time I get out of the bathroom, Alice has changed into running clothes and double braids. She's a walking e-card, one of those inspirational smartass ones about how no matter how slow you are, you're still lapping everyone on the couch. Of course, that's a misnomer because she's fast. I mean she has a gear I've never found. Jasper is sitting in the middle of my nearly vacant living room, pulling my work out of boxes. He's got a sizable stack of frames propped around the edge of the walls, grouped by type – charcoal and graphite drawings, landscapes, oil and watercolor.

I'm toweling off my hair and just thinking, what the fuck. I mean, really. Who are these two? I feel like I'm trapped in some screwed up hybrid of House Hunters and America's Next Top Model.

"Are all these yours?" Jasper's pulling out an oil of Jackson Square at night. The colors of the New Orleans Square swirl into the deep blue of the sky.

I flop onto the cheetah lounger with Bails alongside and start pulling a brush through my hair. "Tell you what," I say. "You forget what you just heard me say about your brother and I'll pretend you didn't just walk in here and totally invade my privacy."

He doesn't blink. He doesn't even have the grace to look ashamed. He's hanging onto the edge of the frame and his deep green eyes, so like Edward's, are following the trail of his complete lack of boundaries all around my front room, moving from details of skin and bone to waves of sea and houses of cinder block. He's unpacking my life. I don't want it unpacked. It's supposed to stay in the fucking boxes.

"It's all yours?" He's shaking his head. "What in the world are you doing working bar, lady?"

Bails stretches and kneads his claws into the edge of my yoga pant-covered thigh. Asshole pussy. "Making some fucking money," I say. "Isn't that why most people work?"

Alice grabs my shoes and chucks them at me. "Go change. Jasper is taking us to dinner. We need to run first."

"But I just bathed!"

"Downtown. He'll take us by Cullen's Café."

It's a Mexican standoff. I glare at her but those striking eyes always win. She knows me and I know her. I want to see the other restaurant and she has to run. We have to run.

"Fine." I unceremoniously drop Bails onto the floor. He shakes out his black fur and narrows his eyes at me, yowling his displeasure. "Ok, ok. Fine. But what's he gonna do while we run?" I thumb over at Jasper who is still being a nosey prick.

"I'll go get my tools out of the car and hang some of these." He sweeps a hand toward the oils. "They don't belong in a box."

"The fuck you will."

Alice shakes her finger at me like the teacher's daughter she is. "Don't talk to him that way. He's being nice."

"If this is nice I hope I never see him mean."

He's holding up the one of Jackson Square like a peace offering. "Just a couple? This one's great."

"Absolutely not."

Alice gives me the bitch face and I roll my eyes. "Fine! You can hang some shit but not that one. None of the paintings. Just the charcoals. And nothing, and I mean nothing –" I cross the room and pluck up a sketch of James on horseback, "with this fucker in it. These go back in the goddamn box. You got me?"

Jasper's dimple surfaces. I swear he's like a cartoon character when he smiles. It changes his entire face. "I got you."

Bails follows me to my bedroom, and I slam the door on the dastardly duo in the front room. "At least I've still got you," I say to him, yanking a sports bra out of my dresser. "Because with friends like that, I don't need any fucking enemies."


	19. The Grand Lux

Jasper takes us to the Grand Lux at Ontario and Michigan above AT&T. We sit facing Michigan Avenue, looking out through the elaborate vines and swirls across the giant plate glass windows, and it is lux. Jesus, it's so much luxury it's almost embarrassing.

I can't pay, not for any of it. I could've, before. I think back to Victoria standing in my studio with a goddamn can of Krylon. I don't know why, but when I look at the vines and the crazy upscale Asian deluxe décor, heavy ornamentation, weird floating mushroom lamps, her words are so clear, practically as crisp as these wonton appetizer things. "I don't give a fuck what it's worth. It's trash. You're trash. When are you going to realize you aren't anything? Not to anybody!"

We sit in a dark wood and cream and velvet booth. Jasper and Alice are cozy across from me, knees together again, his hand in her hair most of the time. She doesn't do this shit; get involved. She doesn't fall. I do, and she sort of ducks her head at me and picks me up and dusts me off. I want to shake her teeth out. Wake up, Alice. He's not one of your gay designers. He's dangerous.

She tries to order a salad and he's having none of it. They compromise with the mahi mahi but she switches out the mashed potatoes for asparagus, and he gives me the look, and I just roll my eyes. She's a model. What the fuck does he expect?

Biology major, already taken the MCATs, studies psych for electives. I wonder how much he's strung together, if he already knows about her. He knows people. He's got that empathy thing down. He looks at you and you feel like it's your grandma and she's turned down the volume on her stories and stopped stirring whatever's on the stove, crouched down to your level and looked you right in the eye because it's time to listen to you – only to you. He will be an excellent doctor. Smart, with a good beside manner, you know the ones that are never accepting new patients because so many people want them.

"So how long have you been an artist?" He's cutting a slice of this white flour-heavy bread and smearing it with real butter. He expects me to give him a real answer the way he expects Alice to eat that.

He is not getting his way any more tonight. The boxes and the nails? That was enough.

"I'm not an artist."

Big bite and soft chews. He's a neat eater. "Having seen your apartment, I would beg to differ."

I take the bread away from him and attack it with the serrated edge of my heavy knife. "I'm a realist. You should try it sometime."

He's not ruffled and it annoys me. I want to make one of the Cullens at least slightly uncomfortable. I mean, other than Esme.

"Your art is stunning." He turns to Alice, offering her the bread, which she accepts, but it's a small corner that gets torn and raised to her lips. "How long has she been doing work like that?"

"As long as she's been modeling," I say while she chews, because Alice will say too much if I let her.

"You said you started at thirteen?" He's feeding her more bread, but just like that the conversation turns to more comfortable territory because models are like actors – they get off on attention. They want everyone to love them. It works for Alice, because she's not Cara Delevinge, flipping the bird and pissing everyone off while she snorts up her salary. She's a genuinely nice person. People don't just love her, they fucking adore her. I sure do.

Jasper seems to be no different. He's wrapped up in her, tangled up in his underwear.

"Yeah, thirteen." She pushes the bread away and reaches for her lemon water.

"How?"

"How what?"

"How did you start modeling?"

"She hasn't told you that story?" I snort. "Meryl took us to Atlanta to buy school clothes and we sweet-talked her into the mall for a while. We were coming out of Spencer's gifts and Elite was doing this model search thing in the courtyard."

Alice jumps in. "And me and Bella are standing there watching these girls just throw themselves across this stage –"

"It was sooo pathetic," I say, remembering. "I mean they were crying if the judges didn't pay attention to them. It was like, cheer camp on steroids."

"You went to cheer camp?" Jasper's fingers are on her throat when she swallows the water, tracing the vein in her neck. I ought to be grossed out, but they look so right, so good, that I just can't drum up the judgment.

"Only once. That was her idea, by the way." Alice glares at me as she rats me out, and I flip her off. "She thought it would get us boyfriends."

"It didn't. Anyway, we're hanging out next to Spencer's with all our Harry Potter loot, and this lady comes over and asks Alice where our mom is, and she about shit because this chick heard us making fun of those girls and she thought we were in trouble."

Alice is laughing now, just flat out guffawing and I swear to God, it's a sight. Her mouth opens up and all those shiny white teeth appear and it's a religious experience, watching Alice laugh. She's the closest thing to religion I've had in a long time, my Alice. She covers her face with her hands, and Jasper pulls them away, because he is just as taken as I have always been and probably doesn't want her to hide her face. She wipes at the corners of her eyes, because her mascara is going to start running, she's laughing so hard.

"And so Mom shows up then, and she says to this lady –" She's wheezing. "She says, 'I don't know what they did to offend you, ma'am, but that one's mine so she can't help it, and that one, that one–'"

She is laughing too hard to finish so I do it for her, practically choking on my main course. "'Well, I've told her Daddy for years that her mouth is the biggest part about her!'" We are in hysterics. I'm going to snort out my pasta, and I kind of am, and it's so gross, but it's so damned funny, too.

Jasper looks between us like he has stumbled into a Laurel and Hardy sketch. "What happened then?" he says, all giddy like a sexy Cullen schoolboy. "What happened?"

Alice is sucking down her water, trying to get herself under control. I breathe heavy, like shew-ee, and try to sew it up. "Nothing much. She offered Alice a contract on the spot, and Meryl told her she was full of shit."

He blinks. "She didn't?"

Alice cackles. "Well, not exactly. What she said was, 'Are you shitting me?'"

"And she wasn't. Alice was in Milan in a month, right in the middle of the spring shows, and she signed with Ford two years later when her contract ran out."

He's holding her hand on the table. "And the rest is history?"

I sober just a bit. "Ancient history."

He watches me while Alice finally calms down enough to tuck back into her fish. She keep shaking her head and grinning at me, and I cannot help but return it. I love her to pieces. She is the Sandra Bullock to my Nicole Kidman and we are going to jump off our house one day in striped socks and witch's hats and float right down to the ground, easy as pie.

Jasper finally pushes away his plate. He pats his stomach like an old man, and it's kind of adorable. "God, that was good. I need a drink, though." He brings her hand to his lips. "And something sweet."

She's purring. "Ooh. What's good here?"

"Not here. Let's go to the Café. I'll get Rosie to make crème brulee."

He pays and we make a bathroom run. On the way out, Alice grabs a peppermint from the bar, lit with warm orange lights and glittering glass. I am making my way through the throng of people, towing her along, when her hand slips out of mine. I turn to see what happened to her just in time to watch him sweep her into a kiss under the mushroom chandelier. It kind of goes on. They are a romance novel cover, one of those new-age chick lit ones with the woman in Louboutins and the man all GQ, and people gawk because Alice makes people gawk anyway, and when you add a Cullen to her, it's just blinding.

I'm so happy for her I could burst. And I kind of want to cry because fuck me.

I may never, ever have that.


	20. Don't say pussies

Rosalie makes the best crème brulee I have ever had. Apparently she doesn't cook much anymore because she's busy helping Emmett run the whole show, but for us, for Jasper, she makes an exception.

She brings the ramekins out on a big silver serving platter, flaming like baked Alaska. It's beautiful and sort of stupidly mesmerizing. There are five of them. Emmett pulls a chair up to the end of the giant blue velvet bench and explains that the delicious smell coming off the flames is double oaked Woodford Reserve. Rosalie pours a thimble over the sugar atop each ramekin and lights it, resulting in the gorgeous crunchy caramel, flavored just so with bourbon. I think I've died and gone to heaven. Well, almost. Edward isn't here of course.

Rosalie hands the tray off to a bus boy and I scootch over as she slides in next to me. "Well, what do you think?" she asks as I put the first bite in my mouth, and I can't even talk, it's so good.

What I get out sounds like "Mmmph," and Emmett is laughing and giving me a thumbs up, pinkie ring glinting even in the low mood lighting from the 1950s chandeliers. He takes a large bite of his own, snaps his fingers, and then he's shoving his chair back and disappearing down the stairs to the bar. Cullen's Café is stacked, deep and not so wide, with spiral staircases of wrought iron on each side of the entrance, leading to the upstairs seating. There is a wrought iron balcony running around a circle in the middle of the upstairs that provides a view into the goings on of the ground level seating and bar.

Apparently Esme designed much of this place herself. Jasper is quick to brag on his mother, and I try, as I slow down and savor each delicious bite of cream and egg and sugar, to remember that a woman who raised such a man cannot be all bad. Our children are our monuments, Grandma said. We build them up with sand and sugar and spank them on the butts to send them off into a world of ice and fire. If they stand against it, if they do not wither in the wind and flame, we have done our jobs well. Jasper is thriving. He positively glows. I watch him feed Alice, and I think of how she is growing with him, right here in front of my face.

Emmett returns with another tray loaded down with heavy mugs made of some sort of handmade pottery, painted the deep blue of the velvet booth, with silver star accents. I feel like I am at a tea party with the Mad Hatter on steroids.

"You have to try this, ladies." He serves Rosalie first, then Alice and me, and lastly Jasper and himself. I take a break from the dessert to discover that he has brought us another dessert. "Hot mulled wine," he says, and he drinks a deep drought of his own mug. "I had to promise the Germans in Daley Plaza they could name our first kid to get this stuff." Rosalie snorts and takes a deep drink and the heat off the mugs brings color to her cheeks in the prettiest way – like the warmth of a candle on the snowy night that is her impeccable skin.

The wine tastes fruity and decadent. It's so hot I have to keep blowing on it to get it down, and maybe when we leave the heat will bother me, but right now it's perfect, perfect, with the whiskey-spiked brulee. I'm not even halfway through the glass as Emmett is asking me to say "wine" again and calling me Bella Belle, when I realize that this stuff is stronger than it tastes like it would be. I'm warming up in the loveliest way, and loosening up, too.

"I'll say it again if you tell me what is up with that pinkie ring." I gesture at the gold nugget on his finger. "You look like a gangster. Or…something."

"I plucked this sucker out of the ground myself."

"You did not."

"Au, contraire, little Belle." He waggles his thick fingers at me and I think how perfectly comfortable he must be in his sexuality to behave this way but then again, a girlfriend like Rosalie would make a guy comfortable. I mean there's just no argument. I would fuck her, and I am only ever slightly bisexual when drinking, which Alice can attest to, actually. Mostly, I am horny, and when drinking I am an equal opportunity flirter.

What? I'm also honest.

"I did. Me and Edward went out west a couple years ago and we went mining at one of those 'you dig it' places in South Dakota." He holds up his pinky like a badge of honor. "And I dug this sucker right out of the ground and panned it out of a bunch of dirt and rocks and shit."

Of course I latch onto the most interesting part of this conversation. "Did Edward find any gold?"

"He did."

"Well, what did he have made with his?"

"Not a thing. The last time I saw it, it was still sitting in the change jar on his kitchen counter." He turns his hand so his finger catches the light. "Edward is not known for his style."

Jasper raises his mug, and Alice joins him. "To Emmett and Rosalie," he says, his other hand missing somewhere under the table in Alice's vicinity, "to style and smarts. And we all know which is whose!"

"To Emmett and Rosalie," we all repeat, and drink some more, and I cannot help saying again, "Bless my soul, this is some good wine," and Emmett is practically clapping.

"She said wine! She said it. Listen to that. It's at least three syllables!"

His phone rings before I can lean past Rosalie to smack him.

"'Sup?" He's silent a moment while whoever it is on the other end speaks. "At work, still…yeah. No, we aren't that busy. Jasper showed up and he brought company so we're having a drink…actually Bella and Alice are here. Here, say hi!" He tosses his phone at me, and I have never been so thankful for otter boxes because I am warm and clumsy and the stupid thing hits the white linen-covered table with a thump. Alice disengages from her Jasper cocoon over on her side of the booth long enough to wince in my direction.

"Smooth," Emmett says, and I roll my eyes, and pick up the phone.

"Hello?" And there goes another perfectly good pair of panties.

"Hey, Edward." Don't say anything stupid. Don't tell him you want to fuck him over the phone.

I hear some commotion on the other end of the line and then the soft click of a door. "Hi," he says. "I hope Emmett's not bugging you too much?"

"Him?" I sip my wine for something to do. "Not a 'tall. He brought us warm wine stuff. He's harmless."

"He is most definitely not harmless. How do you like the café?"

It sounds like he's sucking on something, maybe his lip? Or a toothpick? It's not my boobs, and that's the only important thing, really. It's a travesty, a complete waste of an oral fetish.

"It's real fancy," I say, and internally kick myself because hello, Ellie Mae. Why don't you ask him where the cement pond is? "I mean, it's just lovely. But I think I like the Roadhouse better, you know?"

I can almost hear his smile through the phone, and I kind of wish we were on Face Time so I can see it, but then he'd see me, and I am two and a half sheets to the wind and probably showing it by now.

"I like it better, too," he says.

Oh, the wine, and the brulee, and his voice, and the wine. I am swimming in a sea of sensation. Rosalie is asking Emmett about a chef's special for Friday and I am going slowly crazy here. "Good Lord, ah love your voice."

Oh, for the love of dear eight pound, six ounces newborn infant Jesus. What is wrong with me?

"What?"

"Nothing. Oh, God. Nothin'. I've had too much wine."

Rosalie is patting my arm now, and trying so hard not to laugh while her idiotic fiancé doesn't hold back. He is bent double over there and I'm going to kill him and steal that gold nugget right off his stupid, sausage hand.

"You're funny when you're drinking," he says, finally. "Cute."

"Oh, yeah, adorable. Me and kittens. Adorable little…" Don't say pussies. Don't say pussies. "Yeah."

"You and kittens?"

"I don't know. Ah really don't. Hey! Emmett said you found a gold nugget."

"What? Oh, yeah. I did. That was really fun. I'm going back out west soon, actually. For vacation. Have you ever been there?"

"I went to St. Louis once. I hated it. They're all assholes."

"Really? Why?"

"I don't know. They were all just really creepy, saying stuff to me and Alice. Not even just the homeless people, I mean even the business men. I didn't like it."

He's quiet. "So you've never been farther west than St. Louis? You've never seen the red rocks or the Grand Canyon?"

"Nope." I pop the 'p' and have another warm sip from my mug.

"The colors are really great, and it's so big and open out there," he says, and the wistfulness in his voice, it makes me want to paint somewhere western and give it to him, which is crazy talk, because hello. I don't paint anymore.

"Maybe I'll go sometime so I can paint it."

"You paint?"

"Hmm? No."

"But you just said –"

"It's the wine," I say. "Ah don't know what I'm sayin.'"

"You're saying a lot of funny stuff tonight. I kind of like it."

His voice is sugar and flame, as hot and melty and yum as the top of the crème brulee I just ate, and I want to eat him up with a spoon, yes, I do.

"Edward?" It's a woman's voice I hear in the background. It's faint but it's growing closer. "Edward? Where did you go?"

"I should go," he says. "Tell Emmett goodbye for me."

"Okay," I say. "Okay. Buh-bye."

He doesn't say goodbye. He says, "Goodnight," soft and husky.

The phone goes dark.


	21. Live Long and Prosper

**I apologize for the delay on this chapter. I had foot surgery on my plantar's warts again and it hurt like hell, as always. Then tonight my husband wouldn't stop taking off his towel. I am easily distracted.**

**CR has been nominated for favorite reviewed WIP of 2013 over at FanFictionFridays on RobAttack. I would love you long time if you would vote. You can pick three in that category, so it's not like I'm asking you to bypass one of the really great fics to vote for this one. Just give me a third place pity vote. You can google the site to find the poll since ff likes links about as much as I like my dermatologist right now. It's cool. xo**

Alice leaves on an 8:30 flight out of O'Hare to Atlanta. She'll spend three days back in Georgia and then she's on a plane again – Air France to Paris to film a commercial for Lancôme. There will be puppies and some sort of plaid fall dress with tall boots and she will never speak because Southern accents don't sell makeup or perfume or anything much that isn't camouflage or butter-flavored.

Jasper goes with us to the airport, and while she double checks her seat with Delta, he begins to droop a bit. I know the feeling. I never get used to her leaving either. Ten years of practice do not an expert make.

We stand outside the secure area with her purse and carry-on while she handles her checked bags. He is looking at his feet, at his dark Doc Martins, and I have to stifle a laugh. The doc wears Docs.

"Stop looking like she's dying," I say. "This is her job."

He looks up, and the embarrassment is there but those eyes are also a bit moist at the edges. I swear to Christ if he cries, all bets are off. I am not a crier, but I cannot stand to see a grown-ass man cry. It will be the end of The Notebook up in here, and oh my God, Allie and Noah and the snot snobs.

"How do you do this over and over?" He says, and those eyes. He's not Noah. He's Arliss, and Old Yeller has to be put down cause he's got the rabies and there's no other way.

I give him my best big brother with the shotgun look, that this-is-the-way-it-has-to-be stare. "What's the alternative? You want her to come back?" His chin quivers but he nods. "Then you got to watch her go."

Take that shit, Fess Parker.

He is still nodding when she sweeps back over, heels clicking against the tiles because she's Alice, and of course she flies in heels and nice clothes. There might be paparazzi around, and she is nothing if not prepared.

"We should be low key," she says to him with a small smile as she touches his face, strokes his jaw. "If we end up online, it's you they'll bother, not me. You need to be able to focus on school."

"I don't care." I kind of love how petulant he is, because he sounds like me when we were thirteen and she dropped out of our county school, "Go Dragons!," for tutors and frequent flier miles.

"You will care." She's cupping his jaw now, running her fingers down his neck and across his shoulders in his plain black tee shirt. "They aren't known for being nice." Nahce.

Two women about our age are making their way toward security and one of them, the blonde, stops and whispers to the other. This happened last night when we were leaving Cullen's. Alice had to sign some autographs to make them go away. And still, it doesn't seem to get through to Jasper that our Alice is more. She is theirs, too, by default, by rights. They take a part of her in exchange for the money and the flights and seeing the world from atop stilettos. It's just the way it is.

The blonde produces her phone, and she thinks she's being sly, but she's not. I see her, and so does Alice, who smiles and gives a little wave. I don't know what Jasper is thinking, but in the next second, he's grabbed her arm, pulled her flush to his chest, and is giving it to her but good.

I ought to stop looking because she's my friend, and this should be gross, but yeah, no. I haven't gotten laid in way, way too long, and this is so much pretty in one place. It's like chick porn.

It goes on, and on, and on. I mean if he's hoping to leave an international impression, it's got to be working. I might cancel my flight if somebody was kissing me like this, laying me back toward the ground in his sinewy arms, working his way over and into my mouth, and down my jaw and throat. She's gasping, and pulling at his hair. There's a woman already in the security line with two kids, probably six and nine, and she's hustling them around in the opposite direction and glaring, like get a room. Cell phone lady is snapping away, and probably about to make a quick payday, if she's so inclined.

His long fingers dig into her waist, and when she goes almost limp, he reaches into her there, where her top meets her skirt, and sort of hoists her back up to her feet. He kisses her again, his tongue wetting her swollen lips with swift little licks like a cat enjoying a bit of cream.

I snap my fingers. "Hey. Hey! Romeo. Pack it in. There are children present."

They break apart by inches, breathing ragged. Alice just touches her lips and giggles. Giggles. The shameless hussy.

"You're about as low-key as Miley Cyrus, you know that?"

That smile, lop-sided and smooth, tells me he doesn't give a shit.

"All right, all right, break it up. I want a hug, if you can spare her a minute."

He removes his surgically attached fingers from her waist and she sort of hops into my arms. I pat down her fluffed up hair, muttering the whole time. "It's goddamn indecent. And I am so fucking jealous, you whore."

Alice leans down and presses her lips near my ear in a whisper. "You better hope it runs in the family, girl," she says. "Because hole-lee hell."

I shake her, but just a little. "Not helping. Not helping!"

We are both laughing, because oh, why not? I am going to miss her so fucking much.

She breaks off the hug before either of us starts weeping like a cherry tree in March and digs through her voluminous bag to hand me a small parcel. "For you," she says. "Make me happy and use it."

"What?"

"Nuh-uh. After I'm gone."

I blink at her. "This better not be condoms. You do know his brother is standing here, right? I mean, talk about embarrassing."

Alice crosses her arms, shaking that mane of dark velvet hair around her. "It's not. Now stop. You're embarrassin' yourself, darling."

I blow out a heavy breath. "Yeah, okay. Fine."

Jasper keeps mercifully quiet.

They have me take their photos with both their cell phones, and then mine, so that's three, and we want one of all of us, but we're not asking Blondie no matter how desperate we are, so Jasper takes my phone and holds out his long arm and we all squish together in front of the Delta sign like a bunch of nerds. Alice is radiant. Jasper and I look like two sad little turkeys, waiting for Thanksgiving.

"That looks awful," she says. "Once again, with style!"

Jasper glares at her, and it's so cute, him being pretend-mad, and I say, "Yes, sir, Mr. Gunn."

This time Jasper waggles his eyebrows and I put my finger to my chin, deep thinker style, and Alice sticks out her tongue and crosses her eyes. This is a much better photo and Alice squeals and says, "Ooh! Let's do Miley!" so we do. I am saving that bitch for posterity and possible future blackmail because one day a photo of the Chief of Staff sticking his tongue into the V of his fingers like a has-been pop star is gonna be worth some serious cash-o-lah.

She has to go. She's in first class and they board first. We watch her go through security, removing her heels and heavy jewelry like a pro, and slapping her iPad on the conveyer belt.

She steps through into the little booth that always reminds me of Scotty's transporter room, red toenails and all, and puts her hand up, fingers splayed, toward me. Live long and prosper. I have been, and always shall be, your friend. I raise my hand at her in Vulcan salute. No, we aren't criers, but both of us bawled like little girls at that scene in both movies. It's our airport thing now. Nerds, you know. Supermodel and super nothing, but nerds.

Jasper throws his arm around me in solidarity. We watch her until she's out of sight.

* * *

Back on the train, I unfold the plain brown paper on the package to find a fresh set of charcoals in a soft leather wrap. I take a deep cleansing breath, pretending that I am the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It sort of worked for John Lennon, until all that mess with Yoko and Paul anyway.

Jasper puts his phone away. He watches me for a few minutes as I stare at Alice's gift before stowing it safely in my bag.

"How long has she been bulimic?" His long legs are taking up the legroom of the three seats beside us, so I guess it's lucky that it's not yet ten in the morning and this car is nearly empty.

"You don't pull any punches, do you?"

He does that eyebrow thing his brother does so well, but I swear it's the opposite eyebrow. "Neither do you."

I blow out a breath. "I don't know if I should tell you this stuff. It's hers. Maybe she doesn't want you to know."

"I caught her red-handed last night in the employee bathroom after dessert." He pops his neck, the picture of the man with the upper hand. "She said the fish didn't sit well with her."

"Maybe it didn't."

"Bullshit."

"Why don't you ask her then?"

He pauses, and I can see him regrouping. Go ahead. I have secrets to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

"I plan to, when she trust me more. But, Bella, I'm going to be a doctor. If she's sick, and she's not getting help–"

"You'll what? Report her to someone? Her mother is not an idiot. Her agency does not care. She doesn't need a doctor, Mr. Cullen. She needs a boyfriend. Stability. Love."

He interrupts. "Therapy?"

"Been there, quit that."

He pulls at his light hair, twisting the waves at his temples almost into horns. "Why does she do this to herself? She's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen but she'd look better if she gained twenty pounds. Don't you fucking dare tell her I said that."

"Well, she won't. Twenty pounds would be the end of her contract. You don't get it. She doesn't need to barf to hold that weight. She doesn't need to."

"She wants to?"

"Ask. her. yourself."

He leans forward, his knees knocking mine. Get out of my bubble, motherfucker.

"My brother likes you."

I am giving him the bitch face, lips set like stone, and I know it. "Is the game we're gonna play? Hos over bros, man. She's blood to me."

He ignores me. His fingers are on my knee, over my jeans. "He likes you. He likes how you look and he's intrigued by how you run your mouth. But he is in a relationship with an average, solid, sensible girl. She is dependable, Bella. They go way back, all the way to high school. She's not as pretty as you, but she's pretty enough. She's not ambitious, but she's there. She doesn't shine, but she doesn't make people look at her. She's not going anywhere but that's the point. She's not anything great, but she is not a bad person. She's good enough. Do you know what it means to be up against someone like that, Bella? Someone stable?"

I cannot form words. I'm going to throw up, right here in this stupid train car that smells like Doritos and Mary.

"Yes," I say, and I spit the words at him, because I want him to know. I want someone besides Alice to know. "Yes, I know. I know exactly what that's like."

I bite my lip and when I taste blood, I make myself stop.

I know what this game is like, and I know exactly how it ends.


	22. Sapphire and Tonic

**Thank you for your patience. I spent the time I was not posting this working on (and finishing!) a holiday one-shot, told in six parts. If you are interested, it's complete and on my profile, titled "And Also With You." **

**In related news, I've heard this site is being unreliable again. I am going to try really hard this week to get my work up on Fictionpad. I'm already at AO3 under the same user name, but I haven't updated things there in a while. I will fix that, and explore Fictionpad, also under the same name or as close as I can get. Should anything happen with this site, please go to my blog, my FB, or look for me at one of those other backup spots. Thank you! *crosses fingers that it's all good***

**We now resume our regularly scheduled snarkgramming. **

The Friday lunch rush is killing me. I got up too early for this shit. I am going at a dead run, with Lauren on the other end of the bar doing the same, when Esme darts in next to me and grabs the soda gun out of my hand. She yanks the ticker tape up and waves it at me.

"You get these beers. I'll get the pops."

I don't know whether she's pissed or being helpful, and I don't have time to worry about it right now. I take off, ticket in hand, set three pitchers to pour at the taps, and run to retrieve some special foreign bottles from the cooler midway up the bar.

He appears out of the crowd like Moses parting the red sea. He sticks out, being that tall, and people move out of his way because six foot five? It intimidates people without him trying. He's tan from the summer sun, and he's wearing a white button-down with his jeans. Heads turn because he is what he is. He is what he is and we are who we are. People don't change. Right, Estella?

"Sapphire and tonic," he says, sliding a twenty across the bar in my direction. "Keep the change."

"What the fuck?"

He slides onto a stool that has magically emptied for him. There weren't any stools open a second ago. This bar is wall-to-wall assholes and elbows.

"I'd like my drink, please."

"I'd like you to go fuck yourself."

He smirks. Those blue eyes follow me, and I can feel my hands shaking. The stupid beer bottles are clanking against each other. I hate that he does this to me. I hate that he knows he does. His dimples appear.

"Please, Bella, would you get me a drink?" I don't say a word. He cocks his head a bit, studying me. "You look so good. And the anger?" He tents his fingers in front of him, long digits, and I look at his hand, and yes, it's there. "It's so much hotter."

The fingers of my left hand curl on the bar in front of him. I have never wanted to commit murder so desperately; excepting that time crazy ass Vicki redecorated my studio with a case of paint from the clearance section at AutoZone. I lean down so we're more level and speak through clenched teeth. "You sonofabitch. Ah oughtta put rat pisonun' in your glass." All my words run together. It's a wonder I'm not speaking in tongues.

"Bella!" Esme is still down at my well. She jerks her soft blonde bob in the direction of the wall. "The taps!"

Fuck. Shit. Damn. I grab the twenty-dollar bill and hurl myself toward the taps, flipping them off, and then setting up the pitchers and the bottles in the server area to be hustled to tables. Bree and Alan and even Juan Carlos, the dishwasher who is trying to balance a giant crate of dirty bar glasses on one shoulder, give me dirty looks. Fuck you, too. All of you. You don't know what this piece of shit put me through.

I turn to another guy, older, who is waiting across from Esme with an expression that would make Alice's nightmare of a baby cousin Shelly look saintly. "What can I get ya?"

He asks for Chivas on the rocks, light on the ice, heavy on the Chivas, and Tyler, seated next to him, breaks from his beloved hot ham and cheese to ask rather politely for another Bud. Tyler heard me just now, even over this din. I know he did because there is sympathy in his dark eyes, and something that looks frighteningly like pity. Worse, I think Esme heard me. She heard me curse out a customer. I am so fucking fired.

He gets his Chivas, no tip, awesome, and Tyler gets his Bud, and two college kids in those free tee-shirts the credit card companies used to hand out at freshman orientation get a pitcher of Goose while James sits, watching me. The smile never leaves his face.

Seeing that he isn't going to leave, I finally make his Bombay and Tonic and slide it down the smooth black gloss of the bar from nearly two feet away. To my chagrin, it doesn't fall over and soak him, and worse, I'm not carrying any arsenic with which to have laced it.

He sips. I take a flurry of orders from the ticker tape, and make, make, make pitchers and pints for the servers for a solid fifteen minutes while Lauren runs the bar.

"Refill?" she says, touching the napkin beside him.

"From her," he says, and oh, the killer charm of those eyes and those lips and those teeth, like Jack the Ripper before he rips. She looks kind of dazed and stops a second, shaking her head, and calling over her shoulder at me, "Sapphire and tonic, Bella!"

This time I slap the drink in front of him at my first free minute, along with his exact change out of the twenty for two drinks. "Drink this and go. Please."

"Now, now, Isabella. Temper, temper." He pushes the money back toward me. "You should take my money. I know you need it. And I don't want to go. I want to talk to you." He is a snake oil salesman. "About a truce."

My hands are on my hips automatically. "It's not your money, James. It's hers. And are you crazy? Don't answer that. I hear it rubs off on the spouses. You live with Blanche DuBois, pretty soon you're gonna be screamin' in the streets. You know, like when she catches your sorry ass cheating and kicks you to the curb."

He is unshakable. I hate that about him. He bites his lime and hoists his glass. "A truce. For your sake and mine. I miss you and I want us to be friends. I didn't want it to end the way it did–" He holds up a hand to silence me when I start to pop off again. "I didn't. I didn't know what she was going to do. And anyway, it would work out for you. I can get your money, Bella. You deserve that money for what she did."

"You cannot buy your way out of this and neither can she. Have her call Dad's lawyer if she wants to pay."

"You know she'll never do that. I can get it for you, and then it goes away. We keep it all quiet, and she's happy, and we're happy. You see?"

I hate him so much. I didn't know how deeply I could hate, how it can well up inside you and poison your blood, taint your soul, pull you down into the depths of a riotous madness, not until these two, I didn't. Mostly him, though. Mostly him.

"The only thing I want to see is your back walking out of my fucking bar," I say, leaning so close I can smell evergreen and mint on his skin. I lower my voice to a near whisper. "And you just better pray to whatever devil you worship that I don't plant a prep knife where you backbone used to be on the way out, asshole. Are we clear?"

I pick up my bar towel and move away a few steps. "Have a great day!" I say, bright and breezy, so Esme and Tyler can hear and see me being polite.

James just watches. He never misses anything. "I'll be back soon," he says. "I so enjoy your company, Bella."

I manage not to flip him off as I grab the empty ice buckets and stomp toward Frank in the back.

* * *

I resurface a few minutes later with the ice buckets clacking in time to my own gnashing teeth. Blissfully, it seems James took my very liberal hint and hauled ass out of here. He seems to have taken most of the lunch rush with him.

Tyler closes his tab without his usual smart remarks. "You work tonight?" he says, laying a fiver out for me.

"Yeah," I say, pocketing the better-than-usual tip. "I'm picking up a shot girl shift later."

He nods and drops another five on the bar. "Buy yourself a drink when you get off, New Girl. You could use one."

I'm dumbstruck. He just nods at me and wanders out with Red Bandana, Blue Bandana at his heels like the Crabbe and Goyle of the near South Side.

Esme is facing cash in the register while Lauren watches her from a wash sink overflowing with dirty pitchers. I hoist a bucket and start filling the well.

"Bella?" I declare, even her voice sounds like Princess Diana. She's the People's Witchess.

"What?" If she's gonna fire me, I'm going to cut with the niceties. I will not apologize for what just happened, not even for a job.

"What do you do when you aren't at work? For fun, I mean?"

And this day just keeps getting weirder.

"I run."

"Distance or sprints?" She faces cash like the best stripper I ever saw. She's finished all the 50s, the 20s, and the 10s and is steadily flipping and flying through the fives without missing a lick.

"Distance. The farther the better. I, uh, I like to sort of leave the world behind."

She nods, flip, flip, stack, fan, and clip back into the drawer. "You should try the Lake Forest area sometime. It's very scenic. You'd like it."

I reach under the bar for another giant pack of straws to refill my pitcher. "Right on."

I've got the napkins refreshed, new pitchers of limes and oranges in place, a fresh cup of cherries, and a shiny new non-sticky bottle of grenadine restocked in my well before she speaks again. She shrugs one petite shoulder in the direction of James's retreat as I pass her with a load of dirty mugs and cocktail glasses.

"Who was that guy?"

"An ex."

"Just an ex?"

I drop a handful of beer mugs into the wash sink and the hot soapy water slops over onto my shoes. She's helped me today. What can I gain from lying? What does anybody ever really gain from lying? "The. Ex."

"The ex, like–?"

"Ex fiancé."

"But he's married now?"

"Oh, yeah. Hitched to a solid gold ball and chain. Platinum. Makes the Duck Dynasty guys look like small-time crackers."

She whistles. "Ouch." And then: "Did you love him?"

Again with the not lying thing, right? I harrumph. "As the day is long."

She nods, looking thoughtful. "You still love him?"

I hesitate, and I'm aware, even as I do it, how it makes me look to her. "I think…I think I love the idea of him."

She squints at me. "Not good enough." She pours herself a Diet and takes a few steps toward me. "But you'll get there, won't you?" Her hand is on my arm, like maternal, and I just don't know what to think of this whole day or anybody in this whole weirdass family.

"Yes. I will."

She pats my arm, says, "Good girl," and heads back toward the office with her cold drink.

You could knock me over with a feather because I think we just had a connection or something. Of course, it mighta been the sweat I'm covered in. I press a finger to my own forearm and watch my arm hair stick like flypaper. Yep. This girl's going to need a hot shower or ten before shot shift later.


	23. Damned Skippy

**I had to go back to work this week after being off for vacation, and as usual, my email vomited on itself while I was out. Sorry this is so late. I am already partway through the next chapter, I promise! I also got set up on FictionPad under the same username, so you also can find my stuff there if you are so inclined. Thank you for your readership, and for those of you have been reading and supporting my six-parter, And Also With You, and my previously published one-shots. It's so cool to see people working their way through my stuff! The Lemonade Stand rec'd And Also With You on Monday, which might be one of the coolest things ever, so yeah. Not everything this week was bad. :) **

I spent too much time getting ready tonight. I don't know what shot girls wear because I've never been big on shots. I knew I needed to look hot but I didn't want to look like a whore. Now I'm in a blue dress that's really short in front – something of Alice's that probably shows her cootchie – and long in back. It's kind of a form-fitting mullet dress but it's not as bad as it sounds. I worked on my hair after hurrying home for a shower and that took forever because its natural state is braided and/or stringy. I'm late, and the roadhouse entrance down below has a line so I walk around to the topside bar doors and have to show my ID even though I tell the thug at the door I work here.

Seth is coming out as I'm coming in, relieving the muscle-bound Latino guy who doesn't know me. "She's good," he says, "She's good." He pulls me through the crush of bodies, his big spacer earrings swinging. You could throw pecans through those holes. And how is he here now? He looks so young. I thought he was a kid.

I've never been at Cullen's this late. The crowd seems a live thing all its own, bodies undulating in barely-there light that will make it difficult to see who is who and where to step and what not to step in, including piss and vomit probably. I think of the open heels I chose and mentally smack myself.

There's a crush of people right at the door, and I finally see that someone is set up here with a big metal tub, selling beers to drunken people like ice to Eskimos. Seth is between me and the line for it, but someone is shoving. He's cursing them out and trying to shield me with his body as the big guy keeps backing us up toward the beer cart. Before I know it, I am ass to cold aluminum tub and a voice I could pick out blindfolded is saying, "Careful there. You'll get that pretty dress all wet."

Blindfolded and wet – two concepts placed in too close a proximity to Edward for me to be able to form coherent speech. I spin around and smile for all I'm worth, while working with the flow of the crowd toward the big bar. "Oh, hey. Here I am and there you are, and my dress is already wet. What a night, right?" Oh, God. You know what this place needs? One of those floors that open up to a swimming pool so somebody can turn the key and it can swallow me and my bigass mouth right the fuck now. "Well, see ya!"

I push my way around the front section, dodging two fraternity boys in Kappa Delta Some Greek Shit shirts, and practically lunge into the safe anonymity of the crowd. I am not so fast that I fail to notice what he's got tied low on his hips, underneath a black bar shirt and over his signature Levi's. It's that apron. My dress is definitely wet.

And so is my thong.

"Who was that?" I hear him ask Seth, sounding bewildered, but I don't wait for our resident Dick Clark, the tatted boy wonder, to clear up his confusion. I don't want to know. I don't want to embarrass myself further. Jesus Christ, he didn't even recognize me!

It takes me a solid ten minutes to get over to the server station. I'm running in these stupid heels down the hall, around the office, and into the kitchen. I skid to a stop in front of long metal trays full of Jell-O shots, all laid out in the salad area.

Rosalie, dressed like Hugh Hefner's wife, is helping Esme (who is not dressed like Hugh Hefner's wife) wrap cellophane over the trays. "Bella!" she says, sliding a tray into Emmett's waiting arms. "We were wondering if you'd flaked out on us."

"Me? No way. I don't ever do that. I'm not really a flaker. I was running a little behind and then there was this big line out front…and Edward and stuff and… Why are you dressed like the happy hooker?"

I clap a hand over my own mouth, because really? What is wrong with me tonight? Emmett starts laughing so hard he almost drops the tray. "Ain't it great?" he says. "She a hottie, amiright or amiright?"

I take in Rosalie's thigh high leather boots with the razor slim stiletto heel, her skin tight, bright white dress, and flat-ironed blonde hair. "You're right," I say. "You're definitely right."

"You're looking lovely as well, Bella." Esme is pouring fresh, hot Jell-O mix into little plastic dressing containers on another tray. "Are you ready to make some money?"

What do you know? She's human again. I wonder if it's all the business we've had today? Maybe raking in cash hand over fist makes her giddy? It would me. I'm ready for it. Lead the way.

"Oh, God, yes. What do I do?"

She hands me a small tray full of cold shots. "Follow Rosalie's lead to get the hang of it, and then you two can split up. One of you work topside and the other roadhouse, and then you can switch."

I nod. "Sounds easy."

"Oh, and if you have any issues like you had earlier today, call for Seth or one of the doormen. There are always two of them working the crowd upstairs and down so they should be able to spot you if you're in trouble."

Emmett kind of bristles, his wide knuckles whitening against the huge tray he holds. "What kind of trouble? What happened today?"

Fucking Esme and her big fucking mouth. I glare at her. I can't help it. "Nothing. I just had a little blast from the past I wasn't expecting, that's all."

Esme is stirring blue and red Jell-O together to make purple. Her fingers are stained but her French manicure is magnificent as always. She doesn't even bother to look up from her work. "Her ex fiancé paid us a little visit. I got the impression he was not an invited guest."

"I tend not to invite assholes to hang out with me at work." She won't even look up to see my bitchface. It's annoying. It's like she doesn't care at all that she's airing my dirty laundry in front of half her famdamily. I may have overestimated with that human thing. "But that's so not the point. It wasn't trouble. I can handle him. I don't know how he knew where I worked, but whatever. It's a free country. He can get a drink if he pleases."

"Not in our bar, he can't. Not if he's being a dick." Emmett points to a sign beside the swinging kitchen doors to the roadhouse that I never noticed before. It appears to be a list of banned customers, apparently added on to at will, because the names are in different hands and different colors of ink.

"I told you, I had it. It's not a big deal," I say, hoping it will sink into their big, nosey skulls.

Rosalie is pulling her phone from a little silver bag on a string and handing it over to me. "I know how he found you. You didn't tell us your best friend was famous. Oh, and you totally forgot to mention Jasper is banging her."

"Language, Rosalie." Esme loads Emmett up with another tray and tows him, in his ridiculous pin-striped pants and button down, toward the walk-in cooler, one hand on her designer jeans-clad hip. "Let's put these away."

Rosalie has TMZ pulled up. There's a link to a slideshow of us at the airport this morning along with an article that makes me queasy just reading it.

_**Model Caught Canoodling with College Boy**_

_Alice Brandon, the 24-year-old Georgian hottie, seems to have broken her celibacy streak. Our sources found her swapping serious spit with a blond Adonis in O'Hare just hours ago. The risqué photos, taken in the public area outside the Delta security line, show Ralph Lauren's favored all-American girl getting hot and heavy with the cutey, whom we have identified as Loyola University student Jasper Cullen, 21. Cullen's family owns an empire of real estate as well as several restaurants in the Chicago area, including an upscale eatery on the Magnificent Mile and a bar and grill on the city's south side._

_Brandon's long time bestie/beard, Isabella Swan, joined the pair for an impromptu selfie session after the couple came up for air. Swan and Cullen left the airport together after Brandon boarded a flight to Atlanta. Sources say Brandon will soon be starring in a new fragrance campaign for Lancôme Paris. Her rep has yet to respond to calls for comment._

I sigh. "Those dickheads work fast. I guess this explains how James found me." I pass the phone back. "Fucking Jasper couldn't keep his tongue in his own damned mouth."

"Yeah. She totally looked offended by it." Rosalie is looking at me. "That's some dress, by the way. You're smoking."

My fingers pluck at the clingy fabric where it bunches up around my stomach. "Yeah, well. It's Alice's so it's too small but it was the best I could do."

She grins. "Smaller is better for shots. Trust me, you're gonna be a hit." She sticks the phone back down into the bag. "Which is great because then I can quit doing it."

"Why do you do it?"

Her eyes roll toward the make line, where Emmett and Esme have moved on to slapping hundreds of hot dogs into buns. "She likes the money and he likes the clothes. It's how I started here. Esme promoted me pretty quickly but Emmett kind of likes showing me off, I guess."

I listen to Emmett's braying laugh and find it tough to hold back a smile. "Emmett, show off? I don't believe it."

She's laughing as she fishes a wad of cash out of her shiny bag and hands it to me. "Here's your bankroll, for change. You owe Esme this fifty bucks at the end of the night, plus a dollar fifty per shot. Everything over that, you keep."

"Cool. Let's hope it's a lot." I suddenly realize I have nowhere to stash the cash, other than my bra. "Uh, where do I put this?"

"You didn't bring a purse?" I shake my head. I've got my ID and my train card in my bra. "Hang on." She disappears toward the office and comes back with one of those velvet pouches the Crown Royal bottles come in. "Here. This should work. You ready?"

Seth comes through the kitchen, dragging a two-wheel dolly behind him and talking into his radio. "I'm coming up to the main bar. Edward needs a case of Rolling Rock and two more cases of Bud Light. I need three more bottles of well vodka for the service bar, too."

She sees where my attention has gone and fixes her big blue eyes on me. "I said, are you ready?"

I grab my tray and slip the braided loops of the Crown bag over my wrist.

"You're damned skippy, I am."


End file.
